


Destination Friendcation

by Condensedcream



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Fluff with Dark Undertones, Humor, Hypnotism, M/M, Pining, Post-Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance, Romance, Slow Burn, canon adjacent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 50,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25618312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Condensedcream/pseuds/Condensedcream
Summary: Young Xehanort wasn’t Sora’s enemy, or at least he wasn’t all of the time. Life wasn’t black and white like that. Or light and dark. Sometimes Xehanort was pretty okay.All it had taken to realize that was an unexpected run in at the Moogle Mart, the both of them so unprepared to meet that a battle would have been wildly underwhelming, and also inadvisable considering Xehanort had just bought out all the potions.
Relationships: Sora/Xehanort (Kingdom Hearts), Young Xehanort/Sora
Comments: 103
Kudos: 142





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My self indulgent fic where I indulge myself.

Young Xehanort wasn’t Sora’s enemy, or at least he wasn’t one all of the time. Life wasn’t black and white like that. Or light and dark. Sometimes Xehanort was pretty okay.

All it had taken to realize that was an unexpected run in at the Moogle Mart, the both of them so unprepared to meet that a battle would have been wildly underwhelming, and also inadvisable considering Xehanort had just bought out all the potions.

Sora’s usual quick wit and timely quips were stunned into submission by the weirdness that was seeing a mortal enemy in the wild. Xehanort was mute in turn, and to experience him at a loss for words imparted such strong secondhand embarrassment that Sora needed it to stop.

“Do you wanna hang out?” Sora blurted, voicing the furthest thing from a fight he could think of.

The look on Xehanort’s face at that had been rich, but when he’d recovered enough to accept— that was priceless.

Then they did hang out and it hadn’t been rich at all. It had been borderline sucky, each of them sitting in tense silence and with little to discuss that didn’t pertain to _work_.

That had been part of the ground rules Sora had set for them.

No mean mugging, no keyblades, and absolutely no talking shop.

There wasn’t much left to do outside that.

“You need a hobby,” Sora announced. He did it with his mouth when he meant to do it in his brain.

 _You are an asshole,_ he added for himself. It managed to stay in his head.

“I imagine you have one in mind."

If Xehanort was insulted, the usual whimsy of his voice didn’t show it.

“I’ll give you a good one,” Sora said.

_To make up for being an asshole._

Xehanort delicately folded the wrapper of the popsicle he’d finished a minute before. It had been spiraled with colors and mesmerizing in its design. Sora stared at it much too long before he realized he must have looked like a creep, what with watching Xehanort tonguing it.

“Hypnotism,” Sora decided, thinking still of the popsicle. “That’s a fun one, don’t you think?”

“It could be.”

Xehanort had a maybe there smile, his lips popsicle-stained and subtly curved. There was a fine hollow to his cheeks where the roundness of childhood had begun to fade, and his lashes were pale against his dusky skin.

Yet he was sullen, eyes dim and distant. What Sora usually took for contemplation was different up close, thoughtful to the point of gloom.

It all culminated to form a sort of handsome akin to a sad Victorian poet. It worked for him. Sora could admit this, and it wasn’t his first time doing so. He did have eyeballs and he did have hormones.

He also had a heart that hurt for others.

Fishing his phone from his pocket, Sora handed it to Xehanort.

“How about you give me your number? I gotta make sure you take up your new hobby.”

Because more than a hobby, Xehanort looked like he needed a friend.

* * *

“I thought I was on time, but it appears you’ve left without me.”

Sora startled and looked up from his spot on the park bench. Xehanort stood before him, looking exceptionally out of place in all black against the bright summer backdrop. Didn’t he get sweaty in that coat?

“What?” Sora asked.

“Your mind seemed elsewhere.”

“Went for a snack run, but it’s back now,” Sora said, getting to his feet. “You ready?”

Xehanort tapped a finger against the handle of the rolling luggage next to him.

“Huh, figured you’d have a heartless to lug your things around.”

“I possess hands,” Xehanort said.

“Yeah, but you make everyone else get theirs dirty for you,” Sora teased.

“Well, if you’re offering—"

“No way, do you know how much this thing weighs?” Sora said, slapping the bloated gym bag that was dragging his shoulder down. He had borrowed it from Riku and it still smelled a little like him. “Here, see how heavy it is.”

“I’d sooner shave my head,” Xehanort said coolly.

“Ouch,” Sora said, brow furrowing.

Xehanort’s face changed in a way Sora was unfamiliar with. His eyes began to go wide with worry, a reflexive acknowledgement of a mistake. Had he been trying to be funny?

“Were you joking around with me?” Sora asked.

Xehanort’s face went mostly normalish.

“I wasn’t attempting to insult you.”

_Bingo._

“So you were joking,” Sora said, splaying his fingers against his own chest in theatrical surprise.

“It may have been something akin to that.”

“Needs some major work, but you’ve got a good teacher in me.”

“I hardly came here to be taught humor,” Xehanort said.

“Yeah, well, too bad. First lesson is that there’s nothing funny about being mean. Got it?”

Xehanort sighed once, slowly, looked to be weighing his words and if they were worth it.

“I understand.”

“Great!” Sora chirped. “You passed joke school. Now are you ready for a fun time or what?”

* * *

“It’s not much, but it’s home,” Sora said, opening the door. “Home for a little while, at least."

He'd never been to this world before, let alone this motel, but the reviews were good and they wouldn't have to worry about being seen.

The room before them was painted in plain colors, the windows wide and curtains tied. There was a nautical painting above one bed, a starfish above the other.

Sora let his gym bag slide off his shoulder at the door as he scrutinized the setup.

“Sorry about the bed situation, they only had doubles left."

Xehanort set his luggage next to Sora’s.

“You inquired about other options?”

“Uh, I mean— on the website. I think that’s all they advertised,” Sora lied. “Being tall and all, I thought you’d want something bigger.”

 _And there were only two beds,_ Sora thought.

Two beds and one dashed scenario.

“Thoughtful of you,” Xehanort said.

“You know me,” Sora shrugged, watching as Xehanort removed his gloves and rested them atop his luggage.

He had piano hands. Sora didn’t know what that meant, but he knew it to be true. He liked the look of them, with their neat cuticles and nails painted a distinct greige color. He wanted to reach out and hold them, to trace the lines of Xehanort’s palms and predict a kinder future for them both.

“Sora?”

Sora blinked and raised his head.

“Uh, one of those days,” Sora said, his face warming. “Spacey day.”

Something about being around Xehanort did that to him.

“Of course.”

“You make yourself comfortable,” Sora said. “I’m going to wash up a bit.”

He darted for the adjoining bathroom, the door clicking shut behind him before he was running the taps. He cupped his hands under the faucet, cold water pooling in them before he brought it to his mouth, then his face.

 _Friendcation,_ he reminded himself. _This is a friendcation._

A friendcation where they’d be totally normal, no-touching friends. Because not everyone had a view of friendship informed by having your best buds ripped from your actual, literal world and flung to far reaches, and consequently wanting to crawl into their skin when you saw them so it couldn’t happen again.

Sora held his wet palms to his cheeks, pressing until the heat began to ebb. He looked at his reflection in the mirror and gave himself a few pep pats to ready him to face Xehanort again.

Whatever bravado had him wanting to share a bed went down the drain.

No more hand-ogling, he decided. Hand admiring was on thin ice, too.

Blotting his face dry, Sora committed to hand appreciation at most.


	2. Chapter 2

“I forgot to mention I made you a little something,” Sora said upon his return, in a way that did not convey he’d been mulling over the most casual way to bring this up for seventy-two hours.

Adorning the end of the bed nearest the bathroom was Xehanort’s cloak. Next to it was Xehanort, turning up the cuff of his sleeve.

“Oh God, I didn’t mean to— I didn’t realize—” Sora averted his eyes, backing away and ducking into the bathroom a second time. “Let me know when you’re decent.”

“I’m decent,” Xehanort responded, too quickly to have changed. 

Sora peered out from behind the door. Xehanort was folding his cuff over on itself now.

“Okay, you’re decent. But not… normal,” Sora said, tipping his head at the discarded coat.

“I take it you expect me to wear that every waking moment. Perhaps my sleeping ones as well?”

“No way do I think that!”

Sora had two mental images of Xehanort. One was in his full and villainous getup. The other was with no clothes at all. The latter surfaced with increasing regularity when Sora tried to ignore it.

“Then I don’t see the problem.”

“It just feels wrong,” Sora sniffed. “Not wrong like you’re wrong. But wrong to see.”

Xehanort made a sound that committed to no particular emotion.

“Like, you would feel weird if I took off my shoes,” Sora said.

“I’d expect you to at some point.”

“But it’s not something you’ve thought about!”

Xehanort blinked long and slow, lips thinning for a moment. When he opened his eyes he began to roll up his other sleeve.

Sora chewed the inside of his cheek as he emerged from the safety of the bathroom, looking Xehanort over as he did so.

He seemed smaller without his coat, silhouette unfamiliar and pants fitted closely, stopping at his ankle. He wore dark dress socks beneath them.

No boots.

They sat instead by the door, and Sora hurriedly went to toe his own shoes off next to them. Of course Xehanort expected Sora to take his shoes off at some point. That was a normal thing that normal people did when they came inside.

He hoped Xehanort hadn’t docked him etiquette points for tromping around indoors with his shoes on.

“Can we forget I said anything?” Sora asked. “I was surprised, is all.”

Xehanort breathed the same air as any human, wasn’t bananas level of cryptic every waking moment, and he made typos when he texted. He didn’t drip with darkness or exhale it in great plumes or give any other signs that he was world-ending levels of evil.

Sora had never been less enthused to discover this about a person. It made it hard to remember that Xehanort was a bad guy. Someone Sora should have been on guard around.

“I won’t recall a word,” Xehanort agreed. “Consider it payment for my tuition at joke school.”

Sora snorted, shooting Xehanort a lopsided grin.

“You got it.”

Sora sat himself on the leftover bed, legs kicking as they hung over the side. His palms sank into the mattress as he leaned back on them, eyes settling on the ceiling. There was a cloud-shaped spot that stood out, barely darker than the rest of the paint.

The closet hangers clacked faintly as Xehanort hung his clothes on them, making him the first person Sora knew that cared about that sort of thing.

“Now, what was it you were saying earlier about having made something for me?”

“Right, right,” Sora said, straightening up. “It’s nothing too big.”

It was in fact quite small, fitting neatly into his palm as he withdrew it from his pocket. The tissue paper he’d wrapped it in crinkled in his grip, lined with sharp wrinkles when Sora held his open hand out to Xehanort.

“Don’t bother trying to unwrap it,” Sora said as Xehanort took it, watching his head cock as he searched for where to start.

Xehanort tried anyway, sliding the edge of his nail under a fat stripe of tape as he created a single, clean tear. He unfurled the rest of the paper with a deft touch as the gift nestled within was revealed.

“It’s a pocket watch,” Sora said.

“And you said you made it yourself?” Xehanort asked.

“Synthesized by yours truly.”

Sora watched as Xehanort lifted the watch by its imperfect chain, the links uneven and oddly shaped. The watch itself was a sensible black, picked with the idea that it could match anything Xehanort wore.

“It’s charming,” Xehanort said, looking at its face.

“Thanks, you wouldn’t believe how many—" Many heartless I had to go through for the parts. Busted ‘em up for hours to put this puppy together. 

Xehanort looked up from the watch when Sora’s pause dragged on. His eyes were a warm champagne that made Sora’s stomach bubble.

“How many times I thought, wow, this is going to compliment Xehanort’s eyes super nicely.”

“Flattering,” Xehanort said.

He sounded equally sarcastic and genuine, a tone that appeared to be his baseline.

“You mean it?” Sora asked, because it would keep him awake at night if he didn’t.

“I do,” Xehanort assured him. “I only apologize for not having a gift in turn.”

“It’s cool, I wasn’t expecting anything. This is more of an apology gift than anything.”

"An apology for what?"

 _Well, making something out of your friends,_ Sora thought to himself, wondering how he’d overlooked that.

“For telling you that you needed a hobby," Sora said.

“Ah, that.”

Sora smiled ruefully.

“I figured a prop could be fun. You know, like the way they—" Sora held a hand up, miming the swinging of a watch.

Xehanort’s expression was muted, his smile modest as he watched Sora’s demonstration.

“Make sense?” Sora asked.

“A great deal of it.”

Sora beamed.

“Is this to say you’ll be my volunteer?”

“Uh, sure,” Sora said, not having included himself in the hobby until that instant. “I didn’t make that watch for show.”

“Excellent. I’ll let you demonstrate now.”

Sora stared.

“Now? Now as in right now?”

“Is that an issue?”

Sora licked his lips, looking to the side as if he’d find an excuse there.

“I don’t think so?”

“It strikes me that it is,” Xehanort said. His voice was quiet, approaching disappointed.

“What? No. No way. It’s no issue at all.”

“And yet you don’t want to participate?”

Sora shrugged one shoulder.

“I want to help plenty. But it’s weird, too. What if it actually works?”

“Your concern is you’ll truly be hypnotized?” Xehanort pressed.

“It’s along those lines, yeah,” Sora admitted.

The guilt was stronger than the relief as Xehanort made to tuck his new watch away. 

“I want to try it still,” Sora said. “Because it’s not for real or anything, right? Just practice. Hobby stuff.”

“Hobby stuff,” Xehanort repeated, not unkindly.

Sora nodded. That was the driving force behind this. Getting Xehanort out of his evildoer shell, introducing him to new and constructive interests. Or interests that didn’t involve summoning unknowable concepts through widespread destruction.

“You’ll have to tell me what to do though,” Sora said. “I’m not exactly an expert on this.”

“Yes, I believe that’s a key aspect of this.”

“What is?”

“Being the one that tells you what to do.”

Sora rolled his shoulders to stop the shiver that wanted to surge through them.

“Don’t get too used to it!” Sora said.

“Sit back against the bed,” Xehanort instructed, ignoring Sora’s jab.

Sora couldn’t shake the next shiver off.

He did as he was told, settling himself by the back of the bed. The pillow at the headboard was flat from overuse, the support it offered him meager. His knees came up on their own as his toes tapped the sheets while he waited for further guidance.

“Legs down.”

Sora complied.

“Drop your shoulders.”

Sora didn’t realize he’d had them up.

“Drop them,” Xehanort repeated, more slowly now.

“I did,” Sora insisted. “You want them to fall off or something?”

Xehanort shifted to sit bedside, his watch on the covers as he braced one hand on the mattress and rested his other on Sora’s shoulder. He pressed, and Sora found there was give. He dropped his shoulder further. Xehanort repeated the process on the other side.

Sora had not previously thought him capable of such gentle touch, and he added it to the crisis pile for later review.

“You need a greater awareness of your own body,” Xehanort said, free of admonishment.

“I can’t help that it seems more important to you than me,” Sora said.

He meant for it to tease, but his words wavered halfway through. It wasn’t that funny when he thought about it.

“Shoulders,” Xehanort reminded him.

“Oh, right!”

Xehanort sat back as he sized Sora up, glancing between his shoulders until he decided they were satisfyingly level.

“That was dumb of me to say,” Sora confessed, his faux pas leading his focus astray. “I’m not hung up on all that still or anything.”

"Of course not," Xehanort said.

"I mean it."

"Undoubtedly."

Sora's chest rose and fell with a deep huff.

“I guess I’m overthinking things,” Sora said. “Seeing as you’re the brainiac here, I should probably leave the thinking up to you, huh?”

“That is in fact the blueprint for hypnosis.”

Sora looked askance at Xehanort. No wonder this hypnosis thing was giving him the heebie jeebies so bad, he was practically inviting Xehanort to personally escort him to Brainwash City.

"What are you going to make me think about?" Sora asked. 

Xehanort’s lashes fluttered as his eyes unfocused for a moment, and Sora shied at the impatience he watched being blinked back.

"I am going to _suggest_ you drop your shoulders once and for all."

“I’ll get a head start,” Sora said sheepishly.

He gave a wriggle as he forcibly relaxed himself, thought of how his body had given way under Xehanort’s touch. Sora tried to remember how it had been left exactly, then relaxed further in case he was misremembering.

This was all fake, anyway.

Sora had seen hypnotists at the county fair, watched as their volunteers zonked out only to be commanded into barking like seals or performing a goofy dance for the audience.

His job here wasn’t to actually be hypnotised, because he couldn’t be. His job was to show Xehanort that the finer things in life had nothing to do with darkness and power, and everything to do with sourdough starters, macrame friendship bracelets, and at times silly hypnosis roleplay.

“Your eyes need to be open for this,” Xehanort said.

“Oops.”

He must have closed them in his thinking, but they were open now. Open and focusing on the watch he’d made Xehanort as it hung in front of his face. He tracked its movement as it started to swing, a slow and pendulous back and forth.

It was easier than he’d expected. Simple and straightforward, a repetitive task that took just enough effort to keep his mind from wandering. The rest of his attention went to his hearing, waiting for whatever words Xehanort had for him.

They didn’t come.

The watch continued to swing, and Sora continued to watch. The back and forth of his own eyes bordered on dizzying. It gave him the unreality of trying to read too fast, the clock face blurry around the edges and the hands growing indistinct.

By the time Xehanort began to speak, Sora forgot he’d wanted to listen. He failed to latch onto the words as they met his ears, their meaning not registering as he took in Xehanort’s composed and gentle cadence.

There was no hesitation on his end, no opportunity for Sora’s awareness to shift as it found silence. Whatever he had to say was as well-formed as the battle plans he regularly regaled Sora with, though the subject matter was doubtlessly more agreeable now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am coming to you 20,000 words in the future to say there will be updates every Thursday.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm uploading a day early because I have the power.

“That’s it?” Sora asked.

He ran his tongue over his teeth and sucked on them. His mouth was cottony and dry, the rasp in his throat as he spoke reminiscent of having woken from a nap moments before.

“That was it,” Xehanort said.

“For some reason I figured it would be different.”

“How so?”

Sora thought about his shoulders as he rolled them, wondering if they were any looser.

“I was thinking more woo-woo?”

Xehanort inclined his head as he waited for further explanation.

“More of a ‘look deep into my eyes’ sort of thing,” Sora said, his inflection dramatic.

Xehanort regarded Sora wordlessly for longer than was comfortable, the slight part of his lips hinting at a response that wasn't readily available for once.

"Why did you do that voice?" he finally asked.

Sora turned skittish as he played his last words back in his head. They had a morose and vampiric quality to them.

"I got hypnosis and mind control mixed up," Sora conceded. "Anyway, it was a dumb thing."

Xehanort didn't agree, nor did he disagree.

Sora wasn’t sure which he would have liked better.

"The Dracula route would require foregoing the use of your gift.”

Sora nodded as he looked to Xehanort’s hands. They were empty where they rested in his lap.

“I didn’t need it for the entirety of our session,” Xehanort said, following his gaze.

“Makes sense,” Sora said, even if it didn’t.

What actually came after the watch swinging, and what were you supposed to do with your hands when that was over? Twiddle your thumbs while you told someone to cluck like a chicken?

Whatever it was, Sora wasn’t sure how he’d missed it.

“How was that for you?” Xehanort asked.

“Easy peasy,” Sora said, shifting off the bed and standing with a stretch.

The severe slant of sunset rays through the windows made him squint.

He must have been waiting outside on the bench for Xehanort much longer than he recalled, racking his brain over what conversation counted as casual and what counted as work talk. And how to invite someone to dinner without making it a date but also leaving it open to interpretation as a date.

Friend date, date-date. Getting to know you regardless date.

Was it a speed date if they got fast food?

“Would you care to join me for dinner?” Xehanort asked, interrupting Sora’s relapse into fretting.

“I would totally care to join you,” Sora said, relieved for an external solution to his internal conundrum. “Give me a sec to primp.”

Going to his gym bag, Sora stooped as he tugged its zipper. The excess of clothes he’d stuffed inside bulged from the opening, and Sora fought them back with one hand as he picked over what he wanted to wear and retreated to the bathroom with it.

It was with great dismay that Sora learned his wrinkle-resistant button up was not wrinkle-proof. Finding that the fly of his pants was down and likely had been the entire afternoon didn’t help his mood.

Sora wished hypnosis was real as he shimmied out of them, real and that Xehanort would use it to obliterate the memory of this embarrassing discovery.

Only when he checked the fly on his shorts was up three times was he able to move on to the crowning glory of his ensemble, a puka shell necklace that Kairi had given him when they were children.

It had hung loosely below his throat then. Now it functioned akin to a choker. The clasp was fiddly and tarnished, rolling between his fingers as he tried to do it up. If he held his breath he could almost fasten it.

With his fingertips simultaneously numb and sweaty, Sora leaned out of the bathroom.

“A little help?”

Xehanort turned from where he stood at the closet, his coat half on a hanger.

Sora dangled his necklace. It took nothing else for Xehanort to come closer, palm upturned as Sora pooled the necklace in it.

“Thanks muchly,” Sora said in advance.

He rested his hands on the bathroom counter and bowed his head, looking up through his lashes at his reflection. He watched as Xehanort came up behind him, enviably tall and graceful as he draped the necklace around Sora’s neck. The angle of his elbows was odd, their distance distinctly mindful.

“I’m not going to be offended if you accidentally touch me,” Sora said.

Xehanort’s elbows relaxed as he brought his hands back. He still didn’t touch Sora.

“You’re certain this fastens?” Xehanort asked, leaning in as he studied the clasp. It clicked in his fingers as he failed his first attempt.

“It did last time I wore it,” Sora said, omitting that it had been two Christmases ago.

“I would think it fastened the last time you wore it.”

“Semantics!” Sora argued.

Xehanort had no further questions as he concentrated on the task before him.  
Sora was keenly aware he’d come nearer. There was a sensitive pressure on his throat where Xehanort kept the tension, absentmindedly coaxing Sora backwards with every try.

“Finally,” Xehanort said, his breath flickering over the nape of Sora’s neck as the clasp was secured.

Sora’s heart gave a stutter that reached his words.

“T-told you it still closed.”

“You’ll have to forgive me for doubting you,” Xehanort said. ““I’ll be ready myself momentarily if you’d be so kind as to wait.”

Their eyes met in the mirror at that, Xehanort seeming to notice at last how close they were as he took a deliberate step backwards. Sora’s reflection watched him leave before he was back to pulling at the wrinkles in his shirt.

Sora came back to the room once the wrinkles were no longer in the double digits, the sun’s rays having gentled to twilight and the room dimmer for it. Xehanort was in front of the desk, looking beyond it into the mirror that hung above.

He squinted at himself as he carded his hands through his hair, gathering it into a practical ponytail before turning his head to the side to inspect the results.

Sora flicked on the lightswitch. It lent a patently unbecoming yellow tone to the room and little else.

“Thank you for that,” Xehanort said, letting his hair down and restarting the process of pulling it back. “It got dark around me.”

“No problem,” Sora said. “Still funny to me when things are suddenly dark. I remember back on the islands, half the time it was still light by the time I got under the covers.”

Xehanort tied his ponytail again. It was higher than before.

“I’m not sure I recall nights like those,” Xehanort said.

Dead air filled the aftermath of Xehanort’s remark, disinviting a continuation on the topic. Sora plucked at the embroidery of a decorative pillow, biding his time until Xehanort turned from his reflection.

His eyes immediately fell on Sora, seeming to truly look at what he had changed into.

“If you’re going to say something smart about being shocked I have nice clothes, you can save it,” Sora said.

No one needed to know they were mostly new, the tag in his shirt starchy as it scratched his skin.

Xehanort’s hand went to his ponytail, running through it once as he formed his thoughts into words.

“For one who claims to be keen on avoiding conflict, you often defend yourself from self-conjured attacks.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sora asked, trying to discern where the insult lay.

“I was not preparing a disparaging comment for you.”

Sora licked his lips.

“So you weren’t going to make fun of me?”

Xehanort's features softened with a mix of confusion and concern. It made Sora uncomfortable to see it.

"No."

"Oh. Okay," Sora said.

He felt a little ridiculous for jumping to conclusions.

"Sorry for kind of going off on you," Sora said, wishing Xehanort’s face would change. "I think I'm getting hangry."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sora, your blood sugar.
> 
> Edit: Pretend, gentle reader, that you are on a ride through the Tunnel of Love with your favorite and most handsome frenemy.
> 
> What is the music that is playing?
> 
> (This is relevant to the story, yes.)


	4. Chapter 4

The restaurant Xehanort named was a straight shot down the boardwalk, the neon glow of its sign blurry and unreadable but calling to Sora all the same. The shops that lined the walk called to him as well, their windows providing a minefield of distractions Sora was eager to step on.

He veered off towards stores that caught his eyes with lit displays and signs announcing sales. He dawdled in front of the candy shop with its sickly sweet smells and watched taffy pulled apart, rubbernecked at the sight of posed mannequins with ensembles to sell him.

In the distance, a ferris wheel glimmered.

Xehanort did not stop.

He walked with a singular intention, several paces ahead but never out of sight by the time Sora reined himself back in. He made no remarks when Sora returned to his side, and for the first time Sora speculated that Xehanort wasn’t as talkative as he’d always thought.

There was a lot he still had to learn about him.

Did Xehanort care about surfboards or sterling silver necklaces? Did he care that you could buy three caramel apples for the price of one? Signs pointed to an ambivalence at best.

His demeanor struck Sora not as unhappy, but pensive. Distracted in its own right.

“Something on your mind?” Sora asked, hoping Xehanort was not tipping from thoughtful to overthinking.

Xehanort’s eyes sharpened as they shifted to him.

“Are you wearing jorts?”

The possibility sounded distressing to him.

“Is that what you’ve been brooding over this entire time?” Sora balked. “If I’m wearing jorts or not?”

Xehanort’s silence was telling.

“No, they are not jorts,” Sora explained. “They are raw denim, hemmed to a tasteful inseam.”

Or that was how Riku explained it to him when Sora asked if he thought they were jorts, because he did not think jorts would make a great first maybe-date outfit for someone with Xehanort’s class.

“And they’re shorts,” Xehanort added.

“Yes,” Sora said. “But not jorts.”

God. They were totally jorts.

 _Still tasteful,_ Sora reminded himself. _Riku wouldn’t lie about that._

“How foolish of me to conflate the two,” Xehanort said, lips curved in a smile that suggested he was trying not to laugh.

“If you’re jealous of them, you can just say so.”

“If you one day see I’m in jorts, for once you’ll have found someone that isn’t me or me-adjacent.”

Sora snorted, both at the idea of Xehanort in jorts and the idea that someone out there was not at least a little bit Xehanort. By now he was probably a little bit Xehanort himself through osmosis.

“I can’t believe you’ve been waiting to ask that since the motel room.”

Xehanort tipped his head curiously.

“I haven’t speculated that long.”

“If you say so…”

Sora managed to stick to Xehanort’s side after that, nearing the restaurant as the shop windows around them dimmed, the last of their customers trickling out. 

“What I had intended to remark on in the motel room was your shirt,” Xehanort said, halting as they approached the host beside a sign that instructed they wait to be seated.

“Is something wrong with it?” Sora asked, looking down at his front.

Xehanort requested a table for two on the patio as Sora further scrutinized his shirt, checking that it was missing no buttons or had manifested stains. Aside from the few wrinkles it hadn’t resisted, there was little more than a stray thread that stood out.

He took his gaze from his shirt in time to see Xehanort pulling out a chair altogether too far from the table, though he didn’t appear in any hurry to sit. Sora squeezed around it to sit on the other side, looking up to see Xehanort give him a withering look.

“What?”

“It’s nothing,” Xehanort said, taking his seat with barely-suppressed melodrama. “And there’s nothing wrong with your shirt. I was admiring the print.”

“It is good, isn’t it?” Sora asked.

The smattering of flamingos had been what drew his eye to it originally.

“It is,” Xehanort agreed. “The darts are remarkably becoming.”

“The what now?”

“It fits you nicely,” Xehanort clarified.

“Thanks for saying so,” Sora said. He wasn’t sure where to go from there.

Xehanort seemed equally uncertain, holding Sora’s gaze a bit too long before he cast his own down, taking the napkin provided and unfolding it to rest in his lap. Sora followed suit.

It made him feel fancy, even as he debated if there was a right side up to napkins.

“And the fabric?” Xehanort asked abruptly.

His voice was odd, his hands settled in his lap. He looked like he might be messing with his napkin.

“It’s nice, right?”

“Yes. Is it a blend?”

Sora gave it another look, wondering how to tell.

“It’s wrinkle resistant?” Sora offered.

Xehanort’s face said this was not the information he wanted, but was information he would accept.

“Hey, sorry,” Sora started. “I don’t know zilch about clothes stuff.”

“My apologies if I’ve made you uncomfortable—”

“No! It’s not that. I think it’s really cool you know about this sort of thing.”

It was Sora’s turn to play with his napkin.

His set rule of ‘no work’ had brought the lack of overlapping interests in their lives to the surface, along with Sora’s complete lack of knowledge of what Xehanort was into.

And now Sora had fumbled in the face of a connection, a moment of learning. He was the one that should have apologized, but how did he do that without weirdly oversharing?

_I know I told you to get a hobby, but the reality of you having a hobby, or interests, or acting like an average Joe who thinks asking what my shirt is made out of is good small talk, is about to make me have my umpteenth micro crisis about you as a person. Maybe we should in fact talk about work, and you can try to clobber me after dessert to keep the status quo._

“Is there something you’d find easier to discuss?” Xehanort asked, disturbing Sora’s inward spiral.

“Uh, yeah,” Sora said, shoving his monologue from his mind. “The menu wouldn’t be half bad to start with.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Xehanort and Sora on a dinner date. What will they do?


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last of the shorter chapters.

Sora learned more about Xehanort in the short time it took to browse the first page of the menu than he had in years of off the cuff briefings at Yen Sid’s tower.

He liked sparkling water, was neutral on arugula, and watermelons made him sick.

“Is it like an allergy thing?” Sora asked.

Xehanort narrowed his eyes at his menu, no doubt at the watermelon tea offered. He looked like he was battling back a dry heave.

“It is not an allergy, it is a repulsion. It gives me hives to think of them.”

“That sounds like an allergy thing,” Sora said, staring at Xehanort’s arms. There were no hives— yet. “Riku was the same way with pineapples. He figured they made everyone’s tongue itchy and fat. You didn’t hear that from me, though.”

“Of course not.”

“Please don’t secretly feed Riku pineapples,” Sora reiterated. “Or bees, he’s allergic to them, too. Plus I bet he’d notice if you tried feeding him those.”

“Only because you have asked with such humility will I stop myself from feeding Riku bees.”

“And pineapple.”

“That as well,” Xehanort conceded, somewhat begrudgingly.

From there Sora continued to read the menu, most of it aloud and to himself. He spoke on how jalapeno poppers were preferable to loaded potato skins in the world of appetizers, and if soups counted as sides. He pointed out the burgers and personal pizzas next, then concluded with a strong approval of the mud pie when he saw it in the dessert section.

When he put his menu down, Xehanort’s was resting on the table, his hands clasped on top of it.

“Oops, didn’t mean to keep you waiting,” Sora said bashfully.

“You weren’t. I found your reading preferable to my own.”

Sora smiled, sweet and lopsided. His building crisis had faded in the short time since it started, quelled when he found himself focusing on Xehanort’s words instead of his own panicked monologue.

The moment between them was interrupted as the server came to take their order. Sora stumbled over his request as he forgot all he’d read in the moments before.

A pang of horror came upon him after forgetting to ask for an appetizer, but it was tamed as Xehanort requested jalapeno poppers for them both.

* * *

The walk back to the motel room was longer on an overly full stomach, knowledge Sora was acquiring first hand as he made the journey. What slowed him now was not the distraction of shopfronts, but an oncoming food coma. The mud pie made it worth it.

“Thanks again for dinner,” Sora said. “And for footing the bill.”

Sora hadn’t expected that part, despite the meal being at Xehanort’s invitation. He’d been readying himself to ask for the check to be split as the bill was brought, Xehanort cleanly cutting in before he spoke.

“We’re together.”

It made sense for him to say, and sure they weren’t _together_ -together. But Sora’s brain latched on to the words anyway.

“It was my pleasure,” Xehanort said.

Sora glanced sideways at Xehanort while they walked. His ponytail had started to slip, though it still swung prettily in sync with his steps. He no longer had the morose look that had cut to Sora’s heart the first time they spent time together, his features now holding the dazed quality of someone who had eaten well and wished to do nothing more than sleep.

It wasn’t a bad look for him.

“My treat next time,” Sora said.

“I can hardly think about eating again so soon,” Xehanort said, the words a groan.

“I’ll do all that! We passed a place earlier that had milkshakes. It got me thinking of that one place back home- the mom and pop shop with the really good banana shakes.”

“I will trust your decision making.”

Sora frowned, waiting for Xehanort to go on. He could recall the storefront in his mind’s eye, the bubbly font of the name and print that broadcast its founding date. It was long before Sora was born, a fixture of the community for decades.

“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?” Sora ventured.

“That must have been after my time,” Xehanort said, curt and definitive.

_Swing and a miss._

Sora figured it’d been a fluke back in the motel, Xehanort busy with his hair when Sora tried to bring up the islands.

This was harder to deny.

Xehanort didn’t want to talk about Destiny Islands. There was no deflecting or rerouting, merely a clear and sudden end to any broaching of the topic. It bewildered Sora to think why he wanted nothing of it, appeared to have no interest in bonding over the biggest commonality they shared.

The foundation of where their lives had started, and where they had diverged.

Back at the motel room Sora brushed his teeth and changed into a sleeping shirt that should have been retired long ago. He fought another battle with his necklace that he won unaided, and combed his fingers through his hair before crawling under the covers.

He stared at the spot above his bed, it remained cloud-shaped, but perhaps bigger-cloud-shaped. He must have been more tired than he thought.

Sora rolled onto his side, eyes half-lidded as he watched Xehanort move around the room. His routine was methodic. Cuffs undone first, his hair let down next. There was a crease where the elastic had held it. He produced a bag of toiletries next and fresh clothes, tucking them under his arm as he went to the bathroom.

Behind the closed door, Sora listened to the whirr of an electric toothbrush. Even no-goodniks got cavities, it seemed.

When Xehanort reemerged, his pajamas were a matching set. A shirt and shorts in subdued pinstripe, wholly unremarkable.

Sora closed his eyes before another mini crisis could hit him. Right now he needed to sleep, not tally up all the reasons Xehanort was actually a pretty average— if not eerily sensible— guy. 

Better than average, when Sora thought about it. And—

 _No,_ Sora told himself. _Sleep._

He didn’t sleep then, but he did eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dark Seeker Saga is old news. Now we want Feed Riku Pineapple Saga.


	6. Chapter 6

The cloud was still on the ceiling in the morning.

It had grown again since Sora last looked, turned from a fluffy cumulus to a stormy nimbostratus—a name he remembered only because Kairi taught him they were called ‘bimbostratus.’

His ensuing second grade oral presentation _The Life Cycle of the Bimbostratus_ had saddled him with a detention and an unforgettable fear of speaking the word.

A cold drop of water splashed across the bridge of his nose as he recalled the harrowing memory, sending him from sort of conscious to way conscious.

He sat up in a rush, dizzy for a moment as his blood caught up. He pushed the covers off as he got out of bed, awake enough to want help but unsure of how to get it.

With a single lurch he stumbled to Xehanort’s bed, his hand falling where Xehanort’s hip was, palm slipping during an attempt to shake him.

Xehanort opened his eyes at once, too much white showing in surprise as his expression remained otherwise stoic. He had a real deer in the headlights look that Sora would have found cute if he wasn’t about to have to deal with an indoors storm.

“ _Hey,_ ” Sora whisper-yelled. “Hey, something’s wrong with the ceiling.”

Xehanort glanced at Sora at the sound of his voice, his whites less obvious as he recognized who was speaking. He gave several sleepy blinks before lifting his head to look at Sora’s hand. It still pressed against his hip.

“Er, sorry,” Sora said, moving it up to Xehanort’s waist. “Wait, not there either.”

He took his hand back and placed it in his lap, his other on top of it to keep it there.

Xehanort rested his head back on the pillow, cheek smushing against it as he closed his eyes again.

“Are you seriously going back to sleep?”

“I’m thinking with my eyes closed,” Xehanort said, voice muzzy.

Sora sniffed.

“Sure you are.”

“Sometimes, Sora,” Xehanort began, borderline pained. “You drive me to distraction.”

“What, by existing?”

Xehanort took a slow, relaxed breath. Sora wondered if he’d fallen back to sleep that fast.

“If we continue, I fear I may misspeak.”

Sora barely refrained from pointing out Xehanort had skipped misspeaking and gone directly to rude. Xehanort was lucky he had such a disarmingly gentle face when his eyes were closed. Or open.

Whatever, it didn’t matter.

“Forget I said anything,” Sora murmured.

When Xehanort did as told, Sora pouted. That was not supposed to happen.

“I think I can figure it out,” Sora went on. “It can’t be too hard to fix, must be a leak or something. I bet I could dry it. Do you think fire would work? Because I think fire would work.”

Xehanort sat bolt upright.

“I will handle it.”

“Great! I knew you’d want to,” Sora said, flashing Xehanort a grin.

“You’ve made a compelling case.”

Sora watched as Xehanort began to rouse fully, looking to the spot on the ceiling Sora had been insistent on showing him. He gave a few just-woken snuffles and pushed the sheets back before swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

“Do take my spot,” Xehanort said between yawns. “I imagine you’d prefer it to your own.”

Sora did as he was told, worming his way under the covers when Xehanort stood. The spot where he’d been sleeping was warm and indented, a guide for Sora to fit himself into. The pillow smelled faintly of expensive hair products.

He preferred Xehanort’s bed instantly to his own, sure that the sheets were softer, the mattress firmer. There was an abstract thrill to being in it, the bed shared between them however indirectly.

The flutter of Sora’s heart was manageable, the hot and funny mess that was new friendship yet undefined quickening his pulse.

The bar for their friendcation had been low in Sora’s mind. A matter of coexisting somewhat peaceably and managing civil conversation. With his expectations far surpassed, Sora needed new ones.

Sora wished he had a form for them both to fill out. Check this box for one armed hugs, check this box for two. Unconventional, but practical. The kind of thing Xehanort might actually like, if he liked hugs at all.

Given he’d allowed Sora into his bed without a second thought, Sora pegged Xehanort as being able to at least tolerate hugs. If he would enjoy them was harder to gauge.

“I’d like to report an issue with my ceiling.”

Sora peered at Xehanort. He sat at the desk in the corner, the receiver of the phone that sat on it in his hand. Right, the ceiling. Issue number one, outranking any considerations of bureaucratically sanctioned hugs.

With half the conversation provided to him, Sora gleaned that someone would be by to look at the problem. Soon, from the sounds of it. There was further talk about new room arrangements, mentions of availability and when it could be done. Sora let it in one ear and out the other as he reveled in the better of the two beds.

It was with little guilt that he decided to extend his time there by pretending to be asleep by the time the call ended, shutting his eyes as he heard the click of the receiver being placed back in its cradle.

The sounds of the room were small and faint beyond that, the desk chair creaking lightly as Xehanort stood, his footfalls near silent as he came back to his bed. All noise stopped, and the hair on the back of Sora’s neck prickled as he realized Xehanort was looking down at him.

Xehanort’s ensuing sigh was not one Sora could interpret. There was no thin huff of exasperation or low draw of disappointment. It was simple and light, an easy breath.

The mattress dipped as Xehanort took a seat, one hand adjusting the cover, laying it over the top of a foot Sora had failed to fully blanket. Xehanort stayed like that until there was a brief knock at the door.

Sora continued to feign sleep as Xehanort let the employee in, the both of them speaking in hushed tones as the ceiling was inspected. It didn’t sound major or dangerous, but there were reassurances that their accommodations would be moved. Upgraded, in fact.

Sora slowly snuck his foot out as he grew overly warm under the covers. In time he forgot to pretend he was asleep, nodding off before he could notice the staff had left and Xehanort had covered him again.

* * *

“Wow, talk about an upgrade,” Sora declared, looking at their new room.

It was functionally identical to their last, but now it had two fake starfishes and a seaweed-green couch. The double beds had been replaced by one queen-sized bed. It smelled like it had been vacuumed the minute before they’d walked in.

“I do appreciate the design choices,” Xehanort said, sizing up the couch.

_One bed,_ Sora thought. _Only one bed._

Originally a pivotal aspect of his fantasy friendcation, the reality was now daunting. His short stay in Xehanort’s bed, he decided, was exposure therapy. He’d survived that well enough. Liked it, in fact.

“I’ll sleep here,” Xehanort said.

He was still eyeing the couch.

One bed, one couch had never been part of Sora’s playthroughs. An unexpected contender out of left field.

“You can’t sleep there,” Sora said, because the scary excitement of sharing a bed was highly favorable compared to seeing Xehanort, honorary prince of darkness, being relegated to crashing on a couch. 

Xehanort’s ensuing objection was trampled under Sora’s urgent need for a different conversation.

“Why worry about that now, anyway? We’ve got places to be, sights to see! And if you don’t mind, I have a need for a certain someone to help with necklace wrangling.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I noticed there are nearly fifteen people subscribed to this and wanted to take the time to say thank you. Not only to those who have subscribed, but to anyone who has bookmarked, commented, left kudos, or merely read quietly.
> 
> The next handful of chapters I particularly enjoyed writing and hope you will particularly enjoy reading.


	7. Chapter 7

“This may be on its last legs,” Xehanort warned Sora, the necklace fastening only after several tries and two breaks to let the feeling back into Xehanort’s fingers.

“I’m sure it’s fine, I’ve had this thing forever.”

“Somehow, such knowledge inspires less confidence in me.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Sora said, running his fingers over the shells. “Brings together my look, don’t you think?”

The foundation of Sora’s look was a cherry-splashed sundress Kairi and he had both wanted, and neither of which could agree who saw first. He’d ended up with weekend visitation rights after Kairi looked like she would fight him in the store.

The lace shorts beneath were entirely his own. He considered them lucky for no other reason than that he'd gotten them on sale.

“You have a classic sense of style,” Xehanort said.

“Classic what, exactly?”

“Classically you.”

Xehanort smiled as he spoke, his eyes soft and voice softer.

“Oh— thanks,” Sora said, suppressing a flustered pitch. “I’ll get out of your way and let you do your own thing.”

Retiring to the couch, Sora stared down at his lap as Xehanort went about readying himself. He repeated the compliment in his mind, let it warm him again and again.

Sora knew Xehanort wasn’t evil. But there was a difference between knowing and believing, and Sora had done little of the latter. His original intentions had turned murky as he’d stopped thinking of how to be a friend to Xehanort, and instead how to make Xehanort a friend.

How long would it take to teach and change him, remove the perceived _bad_ and fill it with _good_? How could his presence be made palatable to the important people in Sora’s life?

Sora had replaced the idea of Xehanort as a person with the idea of a project. That it still shocked him when Xehanort said such sweet things with no outside influence was evidence of that.

If anyone needed to be a better friend, it was Sora.

_First step,_ Sora told himself, _stop getting all surprised and hot when Xehanort’s nice._

When the two of them went to leave and Xehanort opened the door with a gallant gesture of his arm, Sora got surprised and hot anyway.

* * *

The sun was high overhead and the boardwalk was bustling as Xehanort and Sora took to playing tourists.

“Where to first?”

“Um, I think you should pick,” Sora said.

In the daylight there was more than ever to take in, a fresh array of sights and sounds. A bundle of balloons beckoned him over to one store. Across from it a snow cone stall offered free samples. Nearby, something doughy was being fried.

People were laughing, happy and loud.

It all demanded equal attention that Sora couldn’t coordinate.

“This way, then,” Xehanort said.

His hand came to rest above Sora’s elbow so lightly that Sora wasn’t sure it was there at all. He slowed once, casually, made enough contact to confirm. It gave him something easy to focus on among the smorgasbord of stimulation, a suggestion of pressure.

It was nice.

Sora let the observation be. He refused to take it with awe or suspicion, or dissect it to find a flaw. 

_Xehanort’s nice and he does nice things,_ Sora told himself. He pretended the acceptance came naturally and not by force of will.

He allowed himself to be guided away as Xehanort picked his way between people, veered from the crowd and down a narrow, shaded alley. His hand stayed on Sora even as the foot traffic grew scarce.

He took Sora to a store with a beaded curtain that clacked as they entered, the air of the shop thick with incense and perfume. The music piped over the speakers had the slow plucking of a harp accompanied by a flute. None of the notes strung together to make an apparent melody.

“What is this place?” Sora asked. 

“The sign said it was a gift shop,” Xehanort murmured. 

A salt lamp the size of a pony caught Sora’s attention, his gaze drifting to the sign plastered next to it.

_Please look with your eyes and not your hands.  
-The Gifted Shop_

Sora nudged Xehanort’s side before gesturing at the writing.

“You weren’t totally wrong, but I don’t think this was the sort of gift you had in mind.”

Xehanort looked to the beaded curtain.

“Don’t tell me you’re thinking of leaving,” Sora said.

He could spot five things he already wanted to look at with his hands, and two with his mouth. The salt lamp was one of them.

“I was under the impression the realm of woo-woo was one that made you uneasy,” Xehanort said, his voice coming from behind as Sora led him deeper into the shop.

“There’s a difference between spooky woo-woo and woo-woo that’s like this—" Sora said, stopping in front of a jewelry display.

An amulet hung behind the glass cover. A placard beside it proclaimed merely being in its presence would ground the spirit, harmonize blood flow, and increase the natural biofield of the body.

It touted its makeup as a non-specific amount of gold, an organic magnet, and polished jasper. A payment plan was available.

The glass fogged from Sora’s breath as he marveled at it.

“I rarely deal in absolutes,” Xehanort said, reminding Sora that things outside of the amulet existed. “But I do think I hate this.”

“Oh, come on! It’s fun.”

“It’s four-hundred dollars.”

Sora wilted.

“Okay, that part is less fun. But there’s got to be more affordable fun around here.”

Sora found it in the form of crystals and rocks, all of them sorted and set inside bowls. Each had an index card propped against its respective bowl, the name and qualities written by hand.

He admired each with individual attention, turning them over in his hands, taking in their unique textures and how they caught the light. A small shopping basket set next to the hodgepodge of pretty things found itself hung over Sora’s arm as he fed his favorites into it.

The last to catch his eye was an inky crystal with many ridges. It was minimally reflective as he picked it up, mouthing the name he saw silently to himself.

_Black tourmaline._

Its claims included driving away darkness and guiding those who’d lost light in their life. Plus something about psychic vampires and anxiety. Sora weighed it in his hand, rating on a scale of one to ten how inappropriate a gift it would be for Xehanort.

Eleven, he decided as he put it back. For all he knew Xehanort would discover a new allergy upon touching it.

But Sora hadn’t, and while he wasn’t sure what psychic vampires were, he did get anxiety.

He picked up the tourmaline again and tucked it beneath his other finds before going to see where Xehanort had wandered off to.

Xehanort had strayed to another display case, one filled with tiny swords with gold and enamel handles. There was no explanation of what they were called or what powers they were imbued with.

Not wanting to startle him, Sora reached out to rest his hand at Xehanort’s elbow. It had been nice for him, maybe it would be nice for Xehanort as well.

Xehanort flinched before looking to Sora.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Sora dropped his hand away, excuses coming to the forefront of his mind. There had been a speck of dust— no, a hair— no, a bug. Two bugs. But all of them fed into the idea that touching Xehanort was to be done for _reasons_ , and not because he felt like it.

“I wanted your attention, is all,” Sora admitted.

Xehanort looked sideways, as if he expected Sora to be speaking to someone else. There was no one. Xehanort looked back to him, his brows drawn with uncertainty.

“Consider it given,” Xehanort said.

Now that Sora had it, he didn’t know what to do with it. He worried his lip and busied himself with the tiny swords Xehanort had been taken with.

“What are they?” Sora asked.

“Letter openers,” Xehanort answered.

“D’you want one?”

“I don’t receive letters.”

Sora would have offered to send some, but he had a hard enough time already remembering to mail the plethora of postcards he'd picked up while world-hopping.

“I bet you’ll find something you like in here,” Sora reassured him.

“I like the letter openers,” Xehanort clarified. “But I have no need for one.”

Sora looked down at his basket. He had precisely zero need for any of his fancy rocks.

“Then let’s find something you do need.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Write about what you know, they say. So I write about the expensive amulets I have seen at the crystal store months ago. My blood remains unharmonized despite coming close to them. My biofield, unaided.


	8. Chapter 8

Cordoned off near the register was an out of place corner of normality. It had a rotating stand of souvenirs where Sora picked out a magnet for Riku and a lobster-shaped bottle opener for Kairi.

Xehanort occupied himself with a table of accessories. There was a full length mirror beside it he was using to try on sunglasses when Sora joined him. Sora watched their reflections as Xehanort switched between pairs.

It was hard for Sora not to look at himself, his shoulders bare above his sundress. They looked perfectly ordinary.

Too ordinary.

Had they been like this before Xehanort hypnotised him?

Sora rubbed his shoulders as goosebumps surfaced on them.

“Cold?” Xehanort asked, replacing the glasses where he’d gotten them. He picked up a shawl next. It was a mustardy shade that Sora classified as ugly-pretty.

“Something like that.”

The air conditioner blasted down on them.

“I’m ready to leave when you are,” Xehanort said.

Sora gave him a thumbs up. Xehanort didn’t put the shawl back.

The checkout process was an exercise in patience as the cashier ran commentary on each item in his basket. She told Sora the qualities he’d read for himself, detailed their vibrational patterns and the cell memory of dirt. 

Amethyst relieved headaches. Jade relieved headaches. Rose quartz raised your heart frequency.

This would relieve headaches.

Sora’s toes wiggled against the rubber of his jelly sandals as the cashier took his black tourmaline.

“For my headaches,” Sora rushed to say.

“Oh, no. Not this one,” the cashier said seriously. “This is to keep darkness at bay, should it be close at hand.”

In the awkward silence that followed, Sora could hear Xehanort shifting his weight.

“Although I suppose by keeping dark energies away, it could relieve headaches,” the cashier added.

Sora pushed his money across the cashier as his total was rung up, declined a receipt, and said to keep the change as he grabbed his bag and hurried to leave. The beaded curtain hit his face as he ran into it. He swatted at it like cobwebs as he left.

* * *

“I would say you look like you have a headache, but as I understand it you’re currently immune to such afflictions,” Xehanort said when he found Sora waiting across from the shop.

“If I have to hear that word one more time, I’ll seriously have one,” Sora moaned.

“I won’t speak of it again.”

“Thanks.”

Xehanort regarded the bag in Sora’s hand.

“Would you like to rest at the motel for a bit?

“Yes, please and thank you,” Sora said.

Xehanort took the lead once more, the crowds from before thinner as they walked towards the pier. They stopped once along the way for fruit slushies, Sora earning himself a side of brain freeze as he slurped it down to dregs before they’d made it through the door.

He kicked his sandals off and spilled his goodies on the bed, revelling in the sound of them clicking against one another as he spread them out. Xehanort set his bag next to Sora’s pile.

“I know you said you didn’t expect a gift in turn, but I wanted to get you something,” Xehanort said as Sora shot him a quizzical look.

Sora reached into the bag to find something cashmere soft and featherweight. He pulled it out to see the ugly-pretty mustard shawl from earlier.

“Hardly a surprise, but after you mentioned you were cold—"

“It’s still a surprise!” Sora said, rubbing the shawl between his fingers. “A super nice one at that.”

“I thought it would complement your eyes,” Xehanort conceded.

Sora grinned at the echo of his own compliment, pulling the shawl around himself as he did so.

“You’re really sweet, Xehanort. Thanks.”

With his heart light, Sora returned to appreciating his purchases. He rolled a tumbled rock the color of seafoam in his palms before replacing it with angular citrine. The tourmaline he tried next, his fingertips forming to its ridges.

Xehanort sat next to him.

“May I see?”

“Um, for sure,” Sora said. He did not feel for sure about it. Not with what it was supposed to do.

He placed it gingerly in Xehanort’s hand, half afraid it would burst into flames upon contact. It didn’t so much as smolder. Xehanort thumbed it thoughtfully. He didn’t look at it as much as he looked through it before giving it back.

Sora slipped it back into his bag, a change in the air taking away his enjoyment of it.

“I don’t think darkness is all bad,” Sora said.

“I can’t imagine what could have brought on such an announcement.”

Xehanort’s words were dry and flat. Sora's guilt manifested by way of him shrinking back.

“I just wanted to let you know I’m not close-minded!”

“How kind of you.”

Sora bit at the inside of his lip, glancing at Xehanort’s face. He had his sad poet boy look on again.

“I don’t think you’re all bad either,” Sora added. “Or all darkness.”

Xehanort looked sharply sideways at him. Sora could not shrink further.

“And, by your own logic, am I not 'all bad' because I am not ‘all darkness?’ Is it your view that these things are directly correlated?”

_Correlated._

That was a word Sora had heard before but did not fully grasp. This seemed like an especially bad time to guess its definition.

“I don’t know what that means,” Sora murmured. 

He chanced another glance as Xehanort. Heat prickled along the nape of his neck as Sora worried he’d find irritation, that in the place of an answer he’d get brushed off for not keeping up.

Instead the sad poet look had lessened to a somber one, Xehanort’s eyebrows lightly arched as he caught Sora’s eye.

“Do you think darkness is what makes a person bad?” Xehanort tried again.

That made complete sense.

“I don’t think that on purpose,” Sora started, falling onto his back. His rocks clicked in their bag as the mattress bounced. “Sometimes it happens by accident."

_Like now._

Xehanort followed suit in reclining, resting on his side as he propped himself up on his elbow.

“Having that awareness is more than most others accomplish.”

Sora put his hands behind his head as a makeshift pillow. His shawl rode up as he did so.

“Darkness is not wholly bad any more than light is wholly good,” Xehanort continued.

Sora frowned.

“How can light be bad?”

Xehanort looked at a spot that didn’t exist as he thought. Sora wanted to know what went through his head in his quiet moments, how he took his ideas and beliefs and wove them together.

“Think of the sun,” Xehanort said. “That is light, the strongest light we know. But what happens when you stare at it?”

“My eyes hurt,” Sora said.

“Firstly, please don’t stare at the sun again. Secondly, this is precisely my point. An extreme of light will leave you blind.”

 _So will darkness,_ Sora wanted to add.

“Suffice it to say, the presence of darkness and light does not truly reflect the character of a person. And, that just as I am not fully composed of darkness, you are not fully composed of light.”

The remark stung Sora in a way he didn’t want to admit, a mix of offense and shame as he struggled to recognize it not as an insult.

“That makes a lot of sense,” Sora said.

More sense than he wanted to think about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really enjoy Xehanort explaining things gently to Sora and will make this meal for myself at any given opportunity.


	9. Chapter 9

They hid in the motel to wait out the worst of the afternoon heat.

The television provided them with entertainment in the meantime, running a marathon of shows dedicated to people deliberating over their dream wedding dresses. Sora found them all dreamy.

Xehanort had discerning tastes and a preternatural ability to predict the winner.

“She’s going to pick the mermaid-style with the sweetheart neckline,” Xehanort announced.

“No way, her mom hated that!”

“Scripted,” Xehanort said, crossing his arms over his chest. “You could see it in her eyes, she loved it.”

“She was crying about it,” Sora pointed out.

“Tears of joy.”

Sora crossed his arms to match Xehanort.

“The strappy one,” Sora said. “She’s getting the strappy one.”

Xehanort was right in the end, and Sora stopped placing bets after that. It was more fun to listen to Xehanort talk about the dresses anyway, commenting on princess seams and empire waists, Chantilly lace versus tulle trim. Sora didn’t need to understand it all to enjoy Xehanort’s enthusiasm.

It made Sora curious as to what was usually under his coat.

Xehanort turned the television off as the credits for the last episode began to roll, a voiceover promising a cooking competition next.

“Did you want to eat soon?” Xehanort asked.

“Right, about that,” Sora said. “I figured we could pick something up along the beach. What do you say?”

“I find that agreeable.”

Sora slid a finger under his necklace, tugging at it absently as he watched Xehanort pick out a new outfit.

The shorts he settled on escaped the _cargo_ territory only by their lack of bulky pockets. He wore the longest cardigan Sora had seen in his life, one which he immediately coveted.

Sora tied his shawl around his shoulders. He didn’t like how it turned out on the first try, but the knot was too tight to change his mind about it now. The tourmaline he slipped into the pocket of his sundress.

There was an airy spritz as Sora made his shawl knot worse. He looked over his shoulder to see Xehanort setting an amber-colored bottle of cologne down. He brought his wrist up to dab at his neck.

Sora slipped his feet back into his jelly sandals, his heart happy to skip two beats when he heard the clinking of a pocket watch being tucked away.

* * *

The clouds were gauzy, all creamy oranges and yellows as the sun considered setting. Bits of blue powdered the gaps between them. A gull leered at Xehanort and Sora as they passed, berating them with a squawk when they offered it no food.

For the length of his legs, Xehanort was not a fast walker. Sora matched his stride, the sea breeze at their faces as they neared the shoreline. Sora thought of making small talk, but he didn’t know if it was because he wanted to or if it was because the silence bothered him.

They passed food carts offering corn dogs and calzones, others with pretzels as big as their heads. None of it stood out as they kept walking. Sora patted his pocket, reminded himself the tourmaline was there.

 _Good for anxiety,_ he told himself. Its sticky residue from earlier clung to his brain.

He wondered when the magic would kick in.

The sight of the beach twisted Sora’s stomach hot and cold, his thoughts scrambling as he took in white sand and blue waters. But then he recognized it wasn’t _his_ beach. The people that sat under oversized umbrellas or played tag with the tide had never been part of his life.

Sora’s sandals scuffed against the wooden path of the boardwalk as he made for the narrow pier that stretched over the water, the hem of his dress fluttering in the breeze. Xehanort remained dutifully at his side, except to fall into single file to avoid a man that was fishing alone.

“I don’t know where I’m going,” Sora warned Xehanort, worried that he’d think there was a point to this.

“That is fine.”

Sora clasped the rail as he reached the end of the pier, leaning far over it. The water beneath churned, frothing where it met support beams. Xehanort came to a stop next to him, resting his forearms on the railing as he focused on the horizon.

He had sandals on.

Not the fun and flashy jelly kind that Sora had, or the flimsy flip flops many other beachgoers did. They were strappy and smart, tied at his shin. Gladiator sandals that made a statement.

His toenails were painted the same color as his fingernails.

“Oh! You’re matchy-matchy.”

“What do you mean?”

Sora looked up.

“Your nails, they’re all greige.”

Xehanort’s upper lip curled back in distaste.

“They’re taupe.”

Taupe, like mauve, was an amorphous color to Sora. He’d seen it applied to too many shades to gather what precisely it was meant to be.

“What even is taupe?” Sora asked.

The breeze whipped Xehanort’s hair around his face, and he brought up a hand to push it away as he considered the question.

“It’s a sort of gray.”

“Uh huh.”

“And a… well I suppose you could say there’s some beige.”

“So what you’re telling me is, it’s greige.”

Xehanort winced.

“I propose this offer,” Xehanort said. “I will admit to wearing greige if you will admit to wearing jorts.”

“Upon further review, I did in fact wear jorts before. Pleasure doing business with you.” Sora doffed an imaginary cap. “Anyway, what I was going to say is you look really nice with all your greige. It’s a good color on you.”

“And I have never seen someone wear jorts with such finesse,” Xehanort said.

Sora smiled to himself at the compliment, pushing off from the rail before pulling himself back to it. To think Xehanort, with all his matching nails and stylish looks, liked Sora’s jorts—or Sora wearing jorts—dulled the edge of his anxiety.

The man who had been fishing alone had friends when they backtracked. They crowded him, slapping his back and congratulating him on his catch. It was the size of his palm, but they still made him pose for a photo as Xehanort and Sora skirted around them.

“There next,” Sora said, pointing to a sand dune. “Best seats in the house to watch the sunset, I bet.”

“And then we eat?”

“Yep, promise.”

* * *

Beach grass scratched against Sora’s bare legs as he trudged his way to the top of the dune. He picked his way around the pink blossoms of ice plants and found a spot where, judging by the depression, others had sat before him.

Xehanort joined him.

The blue of the sky had deepened, the clouds gathering as they were stained with rusted tones. The ocean was red where the sun sat on the horizon and gulls wheeled overhead in aimless flight.

It had been a long time since he’d watched the sunset like this, nothing more pressing than the idea of dinner on his mind. With Xehanort settled in his periphery, it was easy to smudge the details of his form, imagine Riku or Kairi in his place.

The realization filled him with something that was not bittersweet. There was a nuance to that, a blend of emotions inextricably woven together into a joint experience. Sora was happy and Sora was sad. These emotions existed separately and he did not let them touch.

It took an immense effort to do that.

His memories of Destiny Islands were vibrant and warm, a time when his world had been smaller and simpler.

He could not spell ‘chrysanthemum’ right on his test, but he could spell ‘hygiene.’ His mom said that was excellent, chrysanthemum was hard even for her sometimes, and they were going to celebrate his C+ with banana milkshakes.

Riku taught him the right way to pet cats. That they didn’t like to be patted like dogs and you needed ‘quiet hands.’

Sora owned things then, enough things that he was supposed to put them away though they’d end up back on his floor.

His biggest fear had been shooting stars.

“Do you miss it?” Sora asked, blinking hurriedly. The sea spray made his eyes water.

Xehanort bent his knee and rested a forearm on it.

“There is no point in missing it.”

Sora turned to look at him, dissolving his ability to envision anyone else.

“What?”

“Energy spent lingering over what is gone detracts from present circumstances,” Xehanort said.

The words were aloof and disconnected, spoken as though Xehanort was an outsider with no personal interest in the subject matter. A robot would have sounded more invested.

Sora stopped working to keep his happy and sad apart as a flaring indignation took his place between the two. Xehanort dodged this topic at every corner, and now he was washing his hands of it. He’d probably pretend he’d never heard of Destiny Islands if Sora didn’t know better.

“Okay, well, that’s not how missing things works, but alright,” Sora said, his throat tight with anger.

Xehanort sighed loud enough to be heard over the wind and waves. It was offensively dramatic to Sora, who silently dared Xehanort to think about arguing.

He did not.

As the quiet between them went on, Sora’s anger deepened. It was suddenly easy to recall each time Xehanort had brushed him off and cast it in a new, dismissive light. He must have thought he was high and mighty, too smart a person to show emotion.

“Is that seriously what you tell yourself?” Sora snapped.

Xehanort uprooted a handful of beach grass, infinitely intrigued by the act of tying it in knots as Sora waited for an answer that did not come. Sora took that as a ‘yes.’

His anger bubbled over.

“Missing things isn’t a waste of time! It’s not going to throw your machinations out of whack,” Sora said, careful and hopeful in his ability to enunciate a word he’d only read in Jiminy’s journal before. 

“You’re putting words in my mouth,” Xehanort said coolly, but his jaw was tight. “My view is far preferable to the colossal time sink of pining to return to a place you cannot and never will see again.”

Sora’s anger and sadness were dovetailing, coming together to form an insurmountable hurt.

“I bet you think those letter openers are a waste of time, too,” Sora said, having added that memory to his stash of newly perceived transgressions. “But I’ve got some news you won’t believe. It all matters.”

Xehanort’s jaw went soft, lips parting in question.

“You can buy things you don’t need, or miss places or feel however just because. Not everything has to have a point to it. Making big plans gets your rocks off, sure. But stuff outside of Xehanort’s Master Plan, take thirty-two, are still important.”

Xehanort’s mouth opened.

“Shut up,” Sora cut in.

Xehanort’s mouth closed.

Sora’s blood ran the wrong way. He hadn’t meant to say that.

“I’m just… I’m pissed off, alright? So don’t talk to me right now.”

Xehanort tipped his head in acknowledgement.

Sora crossed his legs and reached up to play with his necklace. The shells nipped at his throat as he rolled them, the clasp tight at the nape of his neck as he plucked. He drew it taut with his fingertip and released it several times, focusing on the grounding bite as his anger smoldered.

When he hooked the entirety of his finger under the necklace and pulled, it went paradoxically loose.

The clasp separated with a pop, the strand that held the necklace together losing its tether.

Bits of shell scattered over Sora’s front. He grabbed at them reflexively, catching only air as they escaped his fingers with the ease of water.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, shells to sand. 

The sunset was all watercolors as his vision blurred with tears.

He wordlessly put the skeleton of the necklace into his pocket, his fingers nearly refusing to let go. His knuckles brushed against the tourmaline he’d left there, the thing that was meant to drive away the bad and quell his emotions.

It had done nothing.

Sora clenched it in his hand, fist balled tightly as he yanked it out. He climbed to his feet, what shells had fallen in his lap dripping from him as he wound his arm up.

He hurled the crystal at the waves.

They were too far, and it landed on the wet sand of the shoreline. The surf lapped over it once. The spot was empty after it retreated.

Now he had to confront that maybe it had been doing something, because his anxiety spiked at its disappearance.

“ _Fuck._ ”

Sora dropped back to the sand. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he blinked, and he pushed the heels of his hands to his eyes to stem them. It didn't help. Sora pushed until spots appeared in the blackness.

His crying was soundless, but the long, wet sniff to stop snot from dripping down his face was not. Anxiety swarmed his thoughts, buzzing in his ears as a white noise of numbness came over him. It was too loud to sit with alone.

“You can talk to me a little,” Sora said.

It sounded awful and pathetic above the buzz, a watery plea for distraction.

“What was that?” Xehanort asked.

“My bad vibes rock.”

Xehanort hummed. Sora took his hands from his face to blot at his endless tears with his shawl.

“If I can do anything for you,” Xehanort offered, trailing off.

It must have been awkward for him, sitting by while Sora threw a tantrum over puka shells and a magic rock. Sora’s ability to apologize for the whole of it, and for telling Xehanort to shut up, was not present.

Sora tried anyway.

“I didn’t mean what I said earlier— about shutting up. That was a jackass move. And I am sorry, but I don’t feel sorry. You’re gonna have to wait for an actual apology.”

“What a great deal of nuance your amends present,” Xehanort said. He sounded like he was sitting closer. “I will save mine until then.”

Sora’s shoulders trembled from a shaky breath as he almost laughed, but it turned to an ugly sound as another numb wave crashed over him. Xehanort let out a desperately uneasy sigh, and he was definitely closer, and he did offer to help.

“I want to ask you for a hug but I know if I do you’re going to feel all pressured to do it,” Sora said.

He clutched at his shawl, holding it fast to his eyes. He didn’t want to see Xehanort’s face. Didn’t want to see how it would react now that Sora was taking an uneasy situation and managing to expertly worsen it.

“May I instead ask to hug you?” Xehanort proposed.

Sora lifted his head to find Xehanort directly beside him, expression soft and earnest.

“I’d like that.”

Xehanort’s arms were perfectly gentle in their guidance as he brought Sora close, arranging him with great care. His limbs were lifted and moved, his body coming to rest against Xehanort. 

He was easy to fit against, solid and warm. There was no risk of him coming apart into hundreds of pieces, and Sora couldn’t chuck him at the ocean. Xehanort was real and present in a way Destiny Islands no longer was.

Sora melted against him, eyes half-closed as the exhaustion of his crying settled in. Xehanort gave him a steadying squeeze when Sora’s breath shivered.

It was strange to think that Xehanort had become an immutable source of comfort. He soothed Sora in the simplest ways, from his amateurish small talk at dinner to the way he had rested his hand at Sora’s elbow with chivalrous grace.

It hadn’t gone on long, but it felt like it. Maybe being around Xehanort made time run weird in his head. The last time Sora could recall any unease had been before they messed around with the hypnosis, and that seemed long enough ago to be another lifetime.

Sora rolled his shoulders. They were loose and relaxed, but he couldn’t tell if it was from crying himself stupid. Didn’t that sort of thing make you tense, anyway? Sora hunched his shoulders up and forced them to stay.

“Sora, what are you doing?” Xehanort asked.

 _Trying to figure out if hypnosis works, because I don’t have enough things to worry about,_ Sora thought.

“I don’t know,” is what he said.

Xehanort’s arms held him more snugly. Sora didn’t resist. He remembered reading in a magazine that if you hugged someone long enough, their brain would release feel-good chemicals.

While Sora’s body relaxed in time, his mind was slower. It picked at his worries until they frayed and unraveled before him.

What if he never saw Destiny Islands again?

What if hypnosis was real?

What if it was real, and Xehanort used it for the nefarious act of... giving Sora better posture and making them unlikely friends?

Sora muffled a groan against Xehanort as he reined the thought in. This was nearing tinfoil territory.

If his brain was going to insist on thinking, it needed to think about better things. Like how Xehanort did do hugs, and from what Sora could tell he’d been hiding a nice bit of bicep beneath his clothes this entire time.

Sora nuzzled in closer as he tried to feel out any other surprise muscles, but what he picked up on was Xehanort’s cologne. It had the dry husk of coconuts in it and the velvet of hibiscus petals. It was unexpectedly bright and exciting, a tropical shore.

It smelled like home and it made him sick.

Sora squirmed free of Xehanort’s hold, pushing at his arms until they came away. He clamored to his feet, sucking in a deep breath of air to clear away the fresh set of memories threatening to bring his tears back.

Xehanort looked up at him, his usual composure rattled.

“You smell really good and it’s making me sadder,” Sora said.

Xehanort’s eyes searched for a deeper explanation.

“I’m going back to the room.”

“I’ll join you,” Xehanort said, one hand braced against the ground as he readied to stand.

“No. Alone.”

Xehanort frowned.

“Not alone forever,” Sora added hastily. “Give me a head start, alright? I need some meltdown time. Private meltdown time.”

He’d used up his quota of public meltdown time.

Xehanort’s chest rose and fell with a thoughtful breath.

“And you’ll be alright by yourself?”

Sora nodded.

He took off before Xehanort could question him further, half sliding down the dune as he went. The breeze had turned cool with the sunset, and Sora hugged his shawl close to his shoulders as he hurried.

His one detour was the candy shop, the air around it still sickly sweet as it drew him in. He asked for two pounds of taffy and worried everyone was staring at his tear-swollen eyes and snotty face.

They charged him for one pound and added a handful of free samples. He burned through half of them by the time he was back in the motel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spelled 'chrysanthemum' correctly and 'hygiene' incorrectly when I first wrote this. With our powers combined, Sora and I could bump his grade up to a B-.


	10. Chapter 10

It took Sora one self-pitying wallow in the bath before he was prepared to confront his phone. There were no new messages.

It was dark beyond the window, and nothing had changed when Sora looked out of it five minutes later and checked his phone again. Zilch. He turned it off and stared at his reflection in the screen.

He’d asked for a head start, but this was excessive.

Sora pressed the power button.

No new messages. Full service bars.

He wasn’t ready to say sorry, but he was ready to be less alone. The raw mess of his feelings had ebbed in the bath, washed away along with the bits of sand and dirt he’d tracked in. Left beneath it was a shiny new sense of shame, his outburst equally ineloquent and mortifying to look back on.

Maybe he was ready to say sorry.

Sora sat and brought up Xehanort’s name on his phone before opening their history. His thumbs hesitated over the keyboard.

_im sorry_

Sora deleted it. That was better said in person.

_are u coming back?_

Deleted. Xehanort’s luggage was still here, no duh he’d come back.

_do u like taffy?_

Gone. Sora was sorry, but not sorry enough to share his candy.

Sora toggled the screen off and on as he thought. He went on until his phone’s chime sparked a fumble, the screen face-up as it fell in his lap.

It was Xehanort.

_Are you hungry?_

Sora looked at the time. It was well past dinner. His stomach curdled as he recalled that he was supposed to be in charge of that tonight.

 _no,_ Sora answered.

It wasn’t true, but he didn’t have the energy to pick a place.

Several minutes passed before Xehanort messaged him again.

_What are your preferred pizza toppings?_

‘No’ was not a pizza topping.

 _veggie delite,_ Sora texted. _NO PINEAPPLE_

It looked like he was shouting.

_*no pineapple_

Sora got up to slip his sandal between the motel door and its frame.

_hands free entry when u get here_

With the time he had left, Sora set to tidying. He picked his dress and shorts up from the floor, herded them together with the growing pile of clothes next to his bag. He checked on his shawl where it hung on the towel rack, not yet dry after he’d hastily washed it in the sink to get the tears or snot or whatever it was out.

The worst of the candy wrappers had been cleared away and the bed was mostly made when Xehanort returned, shouldering the door as he entered. A bag hung off his elbow as he balanced two boxed pizzas in his arms. 

Sora hovered around him, an apology stuck to his tongue as he tried to speak. Xehanort put his things on the desk, sliding the bag off his arm and reaching into it. He turned around to face Sora, not looking at him in the midst of taking his hand.

Something cool was pressed into his palm, Xehanort curling his fingers around it. He gripped Sora’s hand beneath his once, wordless with his gift before he let go.

“You can start dinner without me,” Xehanort said.

He brushed past Sora with ease before closing the bathroom door. The water taps sounded, the hiss of the shower following soon after. The curtain hooks clinked as they were pulled aside.

Sora opened his hand. On his palm sat a small, dark chunk. A piece of black tourmaline. He glanced at the bag on the table and recognized it as being from the strange shop from before. A folded napkin was visible from where the mouth lay open. Beside it, something glinted.

When he lowered his head to peer closer, he could see the intricate enamel on the handle of a letter opener. The tears that prickled behind his eyes were new and different, and he stood back to fan himself as he breathed through his mouth.

He knew this feeling to be bittersweet.

Sora sat with the emotion at the desk, rolling the ridges of the tourmaline between his hands. The savory scent of the pizzas made his mouth water and stomach growl. The winking slice of a mascot told him to dig in, but he couldn’t.

Thanks was something Sora had given many times, and apologies nearly the same. But he’d never done both at once, wrapped up neatly together, handed them over with equal sincerity and articulation. Each fell flat in their simplest expressions, convoluted at their most complex.

If he wanted to get this right, he couldn’t rely on spoken word.

In retrospect, doing it with his body wasn’t necessarily the right way either.

Sora didn’t consider this as he waited outside the bathroom door, goosebumps surfacing in anticipation when the taps stopped. He listened to the curtain being shifted, a towel being pulled from the rack. An unwinding sigh.

And he absolutely didn’t consider that Xehanort had not taken clothes in with him, that when he would inevitably open the door he would be mostly-bare, wet hair spilling over his shoulders, a towel wrapped at his hips.

Sora’s arms were already around him, his eyes shut tight and cheek smushed to Xehanort’s chest before the reality surfaced. He was pressed against Xehanort. A lot of Xehanort. It lit up all the touch starved spaces of Sora’s heart, the skin on skin contact delivering a heady rush to his senses.

There was no cologne now, but a soapy clean quality to him.

Xehanort went very, very still. Sora did the same, his arms locked in place as the situation throttled his brain. His engines were not currently primed for high-octane intimacy.

Xehanort was warm, but Sora was quickly becoming far warmer.

“I would like to get dressed before all of this, if you don’t mind,” Xehanort said. His breath flickered against the top of Sora’s head.

His voice was too calm to be natural.

Sora jerked his arms back.

“Yeah, for sure. Go for it,” he wheezed.

Looking away would have been the sensible thing to do, but that part of Sora’s brain had blown a fuse several seconds beforehand. His eyes honed in on Xehanort, opening wider as if that would take more in.

Biceps, check. Back muscles, check. Other muscles Sora didn’t know the name of, all checked. New muscles that didn’t previously exist? Maybe.

Sora’s heart thudded against his rib cage in an attempted jailbreak before he managed to turn himself away, making eye contact instead with the pizza box mascot.

He did not blink until Xehanort had dressed and returned.

“I did _not_ mean to do that,” Sora said.

It came out reedy and high, strung through his vocal cords.

“I trust as much.”

“I was trying to say sorry, but also thank you, and I didn’t know how to do it with words and figured I could do it with my body—”

“Sora,” Xehanort cut in. "Let's eat first."

He was not terse or cruel and the tail end of his words shook. Sora could have died, come back to life, and died again for it. The unflappable Xehanort had been defeated by the colliding of his enemy— friend— frenemy— against his chest.

Sora was in the same boat. He was the captain of the boat. He’d sailed it into Xehanort’s chest.

* * *

The pizza gave Sora something to busy his mouth with, but not his thoughts. They jumbled together in his head as he wondered how it was possible for any one person to smell that good after using motel soap, and what to do with the remains of his necklace.

Funeral pyres, gauche or Godsend?

What level of impolite was it to compliment Xehanort’s chest after such an intimate introduction? And did he know how snobby-cute he was, eating his pizza with plastic utensils?

Above all, was old man Xehanort secretly ripped?

“I’m going to explode,” Sora said after his third piece of pizza, but not because he was too full.

Shredded old Xehanorts danced in his head.

“I would like to go first,” Xehanort said.

“What? And explode?”

“First to speak.”

Sora waved him on. If he was lucky, Xehanort would chatter long enough for him to straighten out his own words.

“I was short with you earlier, and I apologize for that.”

Sora nodded slowly, waiting for more. Xehanort wiped his hands carefully on a napkin— how many of those did a guy need?— and closed the lid of his pizza box. He seemed as taken with the mascot as Sora had been, speaking to it when he opened his mouth again.

“And I am grateful you trust me to the point of allowing me to touch you,” Xehanort said.

He frowned after he spoke, but Sora sensed it was an inward emotion, like what came out of his mouth wasn’t what had been in his head. Sora was all too familiar with the experience, though Xehanort had the distinct misfortune of sounding like a skin-stealer when he got his words wrong.

Although he sort of was a skin-stealer.

Sora pushed the thought out of his head. Too work-related.

“For the record, you can touch me whenever. A free pass and all,” Sora mumbled, also looking at Xehanort’s pizza box. “I like that sort of thing.”

“I’ll keep that in mind."

There was no extension of a similar offer on Xehanort's behalf.

Sora licked his lips.

“Are you not touchy?” Sora prodded.

Genuine surprise reflected in Xehanort’s face as he took the question in. His gaze shifted to the ceiling.

“I’m not sure.”

“Oh, well… if you want to investigate if you like that sort of thing, kind of figure out what your body likes—”

Sora stopped himself short. It was his turn for the words to come out wrong.

“Anyway! Earlier. You were a dick, but it takes one to know one. I shouldn’t have been all pushy and taken things personally.”

“But you weren’t entirely wrong with what you had to say.”

“Yeah,” Sora agreed quietly.

He understood that much. The words had come quickly and were born from anger, but it didn’t remove the truth in them. Or the mistakes. He was right, and he was wrong. Xehanort was the same.

The black and white of Sora’s life was blurring together, and it didn’t feel as bad as he thought it would.

* * *

They sat in the dark with a bag of taffy between them on the bed. Sora insisted Xehanort have some for dessert. Neither of them ate any.

Things weren't normal yet.

There was a tension in the room, their earlier spat not truly resolved. It had been tamed for the time being, but it wouldn’t rest forever. Sora patted his fingers against his thighs as he thought, their argument bubbling to the surface whenever he would stop.

He constructed a dozen new scenarios where he was the bigger person, had the last word, been the most righteous. None of them left him in a better mood.

"Did I say that word right?" Sora asked.

“Hm?”

“On the beach— the machine word.”

The pronunciation remained a stumbling block in his new constructions.

Xehanort folded his hands over his stomach. Above their room, someone bumbled around with heavy footfalls.

“You were admirably close,” Xehanort said. He followed it with the correct pronunciation.

Sora stopped his patting, committing the spoken sounds to his mind. He said it once aloud, then took his bag of candy and moved it to the nightstand. Xehanort gave him a curious look as Sora peeled the covers back and shimmied under the cool sheets. 

“Thanks for still taking me seriously,” Sora said.

He stopped his creation of new memories and held onto the one that was real. Being right felt good, but knowing he could speak without the fear of being penalized for imperfection felt better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now I want Veggie Delite pizza, which I just looked up to see if it's a real thing. It turns out Subway has a sandwich named that. In this household we don't eat Subway. Their bread tastes like napkins.
> 
> From the cutting room floor: Originally Xehanort bought candy as an apology gift and offhandedly mentions it felt like everyone was giving him rotten looks. And also that they seemed to have charged him twice as much as they should have.


	11. Chapter 11

Sora was sticky.

That was what first came to him as he surfaced from sleep, eyes still shut as he noticed how his pajamas clung. He was clinging as well, curled on his side and glommed onto a figure beside him.

The bed was preposterously hot for it, sweat gluing his clothes to him.

Sweat that sprung up on account of sharing a bed in the middle of summer with Xehanort, Sora playing the part of a somnambulant big spoon while the air conditioner was horribly silent.

Xehanort was fast asleep.

His side rose and fell with even breaths, Sora’s arm moving in turn where it was draped over Xehanort’s waist. His other arm was as asleep as Xehanort. Sora was the least asleep of them all.

Probably the sweatiest, too.

Sora dared to lift his head, looking over at the clock. It was too early to exist. He tried not to think of how hot the day would be if it was already this bad. If he was lucky, he could nod off again.

Xehanort stirred when Sora dropped his head back to their now-shared pillow, his hair tickling Sora’s face. Sora held his breath as if this sudden stillness would stop the world, including Xehanort’s waking.

It did not.

The heat was worse as Xehanort yawned, his shoulders rolling back as he stretched them. They stopped when they nudged against Sora, remaining for a long moment before the sheets rustled and Xehanort sat up.

Sora’s breath nearly whined out of him as he exhaled. If he was going to be awake this early, he needed a reason for it. Canoodling was a good reason, regardless of whatever amount of sweating was involved. He’d sleep in a sauna if it meant five more minutes of what they’d had going on.

The covers lightened as Xehanort pushed them back, leaving a thin sheet still on Sora as he stood. Sora opened one eye to watch, nearly waking in full when he noticed how near the edge of the bed was. He wriggled back several inches in the event that Xehanort wasn’t keen on being crowded off.

Not that he was for sure coming back. Sora suspected Xehanort had an internal clock— that he woke up, stayed awake, and actually got on with his day instead of devoting the first hour of it coming to terms with the fact that he was awake.

Xehanort’s steps were a tired shuffle as he made for the window, grappling with the curtains before he tugged them together, cutting off the sunrise that had been spilling in. His next shuffle was to the thermostat on the wall, leaning in to read it with bleary eyes. He pushed at the buttons until the air conditioner rattled to life.

Sora shut his eyes when Xehanort turned around, forcing his breath to come in casual, sleepy waves. It stuttered a little as Xehanort returned to bed. Back under the light sheet, back onto his side.

The extra space Sora had given him was closed as he settled in, close as he had been before standing. His touch was gentle as he reached back, blindly brushing his fingers over Sora until they found his wrist.

He guided it with care until it was draped over his waist once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This wouldn't have fit well into the end of the last chapter or the beginning of the next chapter, so it has its own short and sweet chapter.


	12. Chapter 12

“All I’m saying is that has to be illegal.”

“And which law in particular is being broken?”

“A ton. I bet it’s a crime against humanity as well,” Sora insisted. He wrinkled his nose at the sun as it beat down on them. The pavement had a hot, caustic smell as his flip flops scuffed against it.

“Not to alarm your delicate sensibilities, but the carnival being closed on Mondays is a crime towards you. Not towards humanity,” Xehanort said.

“They’re practically the same thing!”

“Are you sure you’re an Aries?” Xehanort questioned. “You’re sounding very Leo.”

The debate paused as they reached the tall iron fence that encircled the motel pool. The hinges of the gate groaned louder than Sora’s fuming while an employee skimmed the surface of the water with a net. The chairs set out were luxuriously wide, canvas umbrellas overhanging them.

“What’s your sign?” Sora asked.

Xehanort took a seat on a pool chair, the picture of repose in his linen button down with its rolled up sleeves. The almost-cargo pants were back, now in a different color. In his hand was a paperback, the spine unreadably broken from use.

“Ophiuchus,” Xehanort said.

“Sounds fake.”

“Look it up sometime.”

Xehanort opened his book to a dog-eared page.

“I will,” Sora said, slipping off his flip flops. He was sent hopping from foot to foot as the soles burned against the pavement. “Right after I look up where to report the carnival people to.”

Before that, he wanted to swim.

Tugging his shirt off over his head, Sora made for the water. It was dazzlingly brisk as he jumped in, an electric cold in the summer heat. The world was bubbly to his ears under the surface and chlorine stung at his eyes when he opened them.

Water was an unchanging constant in his life. It met him in each world he visited, its presence one of the few familiar things he could count on. Xehanort was like that, too. Except he didn’t like it when Sora dove at him.

With a shallow gasp, Sora surfaced. The scorch of the sun quickly drove him back to submersion, the water up to his eyes as he soundlessly paddled to the pool’s edge. Xehanort’s focus was on his book, neck craned with interest as he flipped to the next page. Sora wondered what it was about before pushing off against the wall.

Back beneath the water, Sora’s mind stayed on Xehanort. Where the steadfast presence of water had always been welcomed, the same couldn’t be said of Xehanort. He was not one to be invited, but one to be endured.

Yet he wasn’t an entirely unwelcome sight.

If Sora was where Xehanort was, it usually meant he was in the right place.

Like now, Sora figured. What could be more right than doing lackadaisical laps?

Although other guests had begun to filter in, their cannonballs and Marco Polos increasingly in the way of his passes through the pool. If the right place was where Xehanort was, the right place had a proximity. The pool appeared to be outside of it.

Sora decided as much when a kid picked him as a diving mark, letting out a gleeful whoop before gunning for his head. 

It was getting miserably hot in the sun anyway, even for an islander.

Water drained off Sora’s body as he hauled himself out and walked back to where Xehanort was seated, snatching up a towel in the process and giving his soaking hair a ruffle. The chair looked like it was big enough for both of them, or would be if Xehanort wasn’t hogging the middle.

“This spot taken?” Sora asked.

“It’s reserved,” Xehanort said, turning the book's page. “Ophiuchus-appreciators only.”

“Lucky for you, I am a huge fan.”

“Name the dates.”

Sora squished his towel in next to Xehanort.

“Make way, fake fan coming through,” he announced.

The threat of being wet got Xehanort to scooch over a few inches. Sora wriggled his way in next, tucked on his side with his hands brought up to his chest. The heat was bearable beneath the umbrella, its shade shielding them from the demanding glare of the sun.

The darkness a relief from light.

Sora butted his forehead against Xehanort’s upper arm, lids lowering as he rested them.

“Yes?” Xehanort asked.

“I’m baking,” Sora said. “And thinking with my eyes closed.”

“I’ll let you be, then.”

Sora wondered what people might see if they looked at the two of them, nestled together in quiet companionship. Surely not enemies, nor acquaintances. Friends, most likely.

But better than friends?

The thought halted, soured as he stopped it.

The relationships Sora formed were not hierarchical. There was no pyramid to be scaled, no one form of love to be lauded above others. He understood that society had a structure, that if romance was not better than friends it was at least more than friends.

You did not have more _with_ friends.

That was an instigator of agitation, a plot line for movies. It’s complicated, the characters would explain. No one wanted these complications. 

Except Sora.

He liked the mess and blur of how it came together, indistinct and warm. The slow saturation of affection, the easy comfort. While he wished he did not feel so alone in his experience, he had no urgent need to understand love any more than he needed to understand breathing.

Sora did it naturally and without thinking and that made him happiest.

With a languid stretch, Sora opened his eyes. His gaze fell on Xehanort’s book, the fluttering turn of pages having stopped while he rested. Sora read the first few lines, then the first few paragraphs. By the end of the page, he had several questions. One of them burned too bright to keep in.

“How does a bosom quiver?”

* * *

The answer to Sora’s question was the sudden shutting of the book, the pages snapping together as it was closed. The cover was facedown, and Xehanort slid it away when Sora grabbed at it.

“I can’t concentrate with all this noise,” Xehanort said. “Why don’t we retire?”

He kept the book close to his side as they walked back, no amount of neck craning affording Sora a better look. Not that he didn’t have a good idea of what it was. Mostly, he wanted Xehanort to tell him. He’d probably fluster cutely.

Xehanort made a point of zipping his book back into his luggage at the room before he spoke again.

“Do you remember what you said last night?” Xehanort asked.

“Uh, I hope so.”

Sora had said a lot of things.

“About being touched,” Xehanort clarified.

He did not meet Sora’s eyes when he spoke, seemingly examining his hair for any split ends. He breathed out of his mouth, once, lips pursed.

Was he flustering, cutely?

“The free pass, or the uh, I don’t know— investigation thing?”

Why had he called it that.

“The latter,” Xehanort said promptly, and then nothing else.

Sora combed his fingers through his chlorine-stiffened hair. It wasn’t long enough to check for split ends and he had little else to look at aside from Xehanort not looking at him. That was fine by Sora. He was happy to look at Xehanort anyway.

“Did you want to enroll in Sora’s School of Snuggling?”

Xehanort winced.

“Less so when you put it that way.”

“Aw, come on. This is a fully accredited course. We do have a dress code, though.” Sora looked down at himself.

“Does it include swim trunks?” Xehanort asked.

“Um, no. Give me a sec to get ready for class.”

* * *

The dress code for Sora’s School of Snuggling was simple. Socks if you want them, pants if you need them, and comfort above all else.

Bare arms appreciated.

“But optional,” Sora explained, staring at Xehanort’s sleeves.

 _Extra credit if you ditch ‘em,_ he added in his head. He rubbed his own arms, uncovered by his tank top and tried to beam the information to Xehanort.

If he received it, Xehanort was not an overachiever today.

“A lot of people think there isn’t much to this, but there is. We’ve got your basics, spooning, canoodling, all that jazz,” Sora explained. “Then there’s the advanced stuff— forking, kniving, the back-to-back and the human blanket.”

“I’m debating disenrolling,” Xehanort said abruptly. 

“What, you can’t do that!”

“Your curriculum sounds rather too advanced for me.”

Sora frowned, shaking his head at Xehanort’s evaluation. That was the last thing he wanted. But maybe for someone like Xehanort, too clammed up to admit to reading a romance novel, what had been posed to him appeared to be a joke. Or worse, a setup.

If he wanted Xehanort to take this seriously, he needed to as well.

“Okay, never mind what I was saying earlier,” Sora said. “I was getting ahead of myself. But what I said last night, I did mean that. We can try whatever you think would be neat.”

“And there will be no professor Sora?”

“That’s doctor professor Sora to you, but yeah. I won’t goof around.”

Sora was aware of Xehanort studying him as he spoke, assessing the truth to his words.

“Look, trust me a little,” Sora asked. “I like pranks, but you know I’m game for this. Especially considering I was spooning you and all this morning.”

“You were awake for that?” Xehanort asked. Sora could see him making an effort not to draw away.

“Uh huh, and I am pretty sure we both liked it, so.”

Sora gestured at the bed around them. Xehanort moved to sit at the headboard, reclining against the pillows. He patted the space next to him, and Sora obliged his summons. The outside of their thighs touched and Sora’s shoulder rested against Xehanort’s arm, his height too tall to match.

When the silence sprang up, Sora did not move to fill it. It did not come between them, born from tension or distrust. It hid nothing, because there were no words needing to be spoken.

That was for the best. Sora didn’t have the words for the moment, his usual full body approach reduced to a scrap of pressure. For what little he was given, it did not starve him. He could focus now on the simplicity of it, the subtle warmth that arose where they barely touched, how his heart beat with humble interest.

Sora liked _too much_. He liked a dozen bangles on his arms and clashing earrings. He liked running until his muscles screamed and his lungs stopped short of collapsing. When he ate it was with too many things on his plate and in such quick succession he did not taste each for what they were.

He perceived the world as a constant feast for his senses, never having considered that consuming less did not mean enjoying less.

Xehanort’s arm nudged against his.

“Do you mind?”

Sora turned his head to look at it— or tried to. His cheek was mushed to it, his body having slumped sideways in the time that had passed. Sora’s urgency as he sat upright was on par with winter molasses.

Xehanort lifted his arm after it was free, delicately resting it over Sora’s shoulders. Sora’s heartbeat became a lot less humble in its interest. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and Sora was sure Xehanort would be able to feel it.

“How is this for you?” Xehanort asked, his fingertips brushing Sora’s shoulder as he flexed his hand.

“Good,” Sora said, with little room in his head for more thoughtful words.

If this was how Xehanort got when he read romance books, Sora was going to have to buy him an entire library. And offer him a tenured position at Sora’s School of Snuggling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sora will get his carnival wishes soon enough.


	13. Chapter 13

Sora was going to wear his carnival admission bracelet until the heat death of the universe. It was a disgustingly neon orange and made from a slippery sibling to plastic. It had come into his life five minutes ago.

It entitled him to free rein of the grounds, a ride on the Ferris wheel, and a complimentary temporary tattoo.

“I bet a dragon on my chest would look really sick,” Sora said as they approached the booth they’d been directed towards. “How about matching dragons?”

“You may have my tattoo.”

That was a shame, because Xehanort’s chest was on full display in the plunging top he’d picked to wear. The satin of it looked wet in the sunlight, the fabric dripping down into a deep V. That Xehanort’s tits didn’t spill out was a mystery Sora was happy to ponder at length.

“What’ll it be for the two of you?” the stall owner asked.

He made a sweeping gesture at the table in front of him, the likes of it covered in endless drawings. Tattoos engulfed his own arms, and Sora couldn’t tell if they were real or fake. One of them was peeling off.

Fake, then.

“Uh, we need a sec to look,” Sora said.

“An abundance of them,” Xehanort added.

The dragon tattoo Sora found looked sick, but the wrong kind of sick. It was noodly and dull, the claws closer to paws. The fire it breathed came from somewhere between its nose and bulging eyes. It was beautiful.

“That’s the one,” Sora chirped. “And now for you.”

A more discerning eye was necessary for Xehanort’s tattoo.

There were stripes of barbed wire next to sweet little kittens. Whimsical rainbows speckled by stars beside skulls with grinning teeth. The faeries were nice, but they didn’t speak to Sora. From how he glanced over them, Xehanort felt the same.

“That one,” Sora said, a gasp rising in his throat as perfection presented itself.

“No.”

“Yes! You said I could have yours.”

“Then you’re not putting it on me,” Xehanort said.

The stall owner handed over their two new tattoos, the application instructions printed on the reverse side. Xehanort tucked them into his exquisitely square crossbody bag, steadfast in his refusal to look at Sora’s picks.

“I have a vision,” Sora promised. “Have a little faith in me.”

* * *

They rode the Ferris wheel while deciding what to do next. The inside of their carriage smelled like someone else’s perfume and there was popcorn scattered on the floor. The vinyl seats were a flashy apple red that nearly distracted from the worn holes in them.

Xehanort, in his infinite endeavor to plan ahead, had grabbed a map from the admission booth. He unfolded it across both of their laps, the landscape carried out with cartoonish enthusiasm.

“What looks of greatest interest to you? Xehanort asked.

He smoothed a crease out of the middle as Sora leaned in for a better look. Whoever had made this had a passion not for cartography, but for… something. Clowns, Sora guessed from the several of them rendered with grotesque care.

The other illustrations were lackadaisical afterthoughts. The food stalls were grouped in one corner and the carnival rides next to them.

Inadvisable, yet practical.

Kitty corner was a line of indistinct stalls to shop at and a garden exhibit. Sora’s eyes homed in on the words ‘butterfly room’ with feverish excitement before darting to the one thing that could be better.

“Pig racing!” Sora squealed.

He punched a hole in the map with his finger. The butterfly room was now a butt room. The pig racing was miraculously unharmed.

“That does seem to be the case.”

“Can you imagine how bad we could beat them? I bet I’ll set a record.”

“It’s my understanding that we watch the pigs race,” Xehanort said.

Sora’s dreams of his name at the top of a scoreboard and a medal around his neck disintegrated before they could be fully fantasized.

“Maybe if I ask nicely—"

“You may yet set a record for quickest removal from a carnival.”

Sora stuck out his tongue as Xehanort folded the map back up. Racing pigs was off the menu, fine. But he would win something. Something big and impressive, a trophy to his abilities.

And when Xehanort swooned at his strength, he’d swoon again as Sora gave him the prize. Those cheesy romance novels would pale in the face of this grand act.

* * *

Sora’s hubris burned brightly as he beelined for the games. He heard their chirps and trills, their winning bells a siren song. The tallest of them drew him like a moth to a flame, towering over all others as it invited him to test his strength.

“Hey there, little man,” the operator said as they came near. They had a flimsy top hat that made them look like a second-rate magician. “You look like you’re on a mission.”

“I sure am,” Sora said, staring at the top of the pole.

It was taller than he thought, and when Xehanort stood beside him he only felt smaller. 

“Tell ya what, you’ve got spirit. First try is free.”

The operator grabbed a mallet propped up against the high striker, giving it a twirl before handing it off to Sora. There was no weight to it, the handle hollow and the head a squishy foam when he poked it.

“Does this thing work?” Sora asked.

He looked between Xehanort and the operator. Their expressions fell on either side of the spectrum.

“Works if you’re strong,” the operator said. “But if you’re afraid of looking bad in front of your beau—”

Sora grasped the handle in both hands as he went to stand before the machine, the tips of his ears hot as he adjusted his grip. Piece of junk or not, it didn’t matter. He’d fended off plenty of heartless before with a wooden sword, a silly carnival game was nothing in the way of that.

The operator patted the back of the tower as Sora planted his feet. He didn’t look at Xehanort. There was enough pressure riding on this without trying to bring telepathy into this and ask how Xehanort liked the word beau, because Sora liked it. It was refined and elegant, just like Xehanort.

“Cold feet?” the operator asked.

Sora swung the mallet overhead, bringing it down with nervous strength on the bull’s eye. The mallet squeaked upon impact, the meter soaring upwards in a burst of speed. It slowed as it hit the midpoint, trickled to a sorry crawl before stopping short several inches from the top.

“Come on,” Sora groaned. If he hadn’t been shaken up he would have nailed it.

“Two bucks and you can go again,” the operator offered. “I bet all you needed was a little warm up.”

Sora lodged the mallet between his feet as he wiped his palms on his pants. They were damp. He didn’t think about why as he looked at the prizes strung up next to the game. They were stuffed and smiling, animals begging to be gifted.

What could be more romantic than that?

Two dollars changed hands and Sora readied himself to try again. The operator gave the tower another pat.

“All you, boss.”

Sora struck a second time.

Then he struck out a second time.

The meter had no beginning burst of speed, as it meandered its way up to Sora’s height before dropping back down with a sad whistle.

“Third time’s the charm?” the operator asked.

Sora reached for his pocket, but his fingers found something else along the way. His hand was intercepted by Xehanort’s, cool and soft as long fingers threaded through his own. When Xehanort squeezed, he squeezed Sora’s heart as well.

“I believe you have pigs to race,” Xehanort said, head inclined and voice low.

“Third time’s the charm,” the operator repeated. “Another swing on the house?”

Sora hesitated, glancing between the game and Xehanort. He was caught between two wants. A chance at proving his strength, and a chance at being with Xehanort like... this. Holding hands, being close. Bringing a new intimacy into what their friendship was.

He wanted that more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kiss on the mouth already.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I watched a 45 minute PoV video of a man walking around the county fair before I wrote this. Because we cannot go I will make my favorite characters go instead.

Xehanort’s hand remained soft in Sora’s, but it did not remain cool. Or dry.

As they walked away from the high striker, Sora counted the seconds they were joined. Xehanort would let go soon, drop the act once they were out of sight. Sora made it up to one hundred and forty before he couldn’t remember if he’d counted that one twice, and then more seconds were passing and it was too late to catch up.

He switched to focusing on Xehanort’s hand. How their palms were flush together, Xehanort’s larger than Sora’s own. There were no calluses that met Sora’s, the skin even and unmarked. Sora’s made enough sweat for the both of them, but his fingers were locked in place, their webbing snug against Xehanort’s.

The difference in their heights was glaring with such little space between them.

Sora leveled off at Xehanort’s shoulder if he was being extraordinarily generous with himself. It made him sort of giddy. He wanted to congratulate Xehanort on his height as if it were achieved through effort and not through happenstance.

Sora wanted to congratulate himself as well for holding hands with Mr. Tall, Dark and Handsome. It made up for the congratulations he’d missed out on by not giving the high striker a third go.

“You know I could have won that game, right?” Sora asked.

Xehanort looked down at Sora. It stirred his tall-admiration again.

"I have heard many a testament to your personal strength."

"Oh, yeah. I didn’t think about that.”

"But to answer your question, no, I do not think you could have won," Xehanort finished.

Sora frowned up at Xehanort.

"What did I tell you at joke school? No being mean."

"There is no malice in my observation, merely that these games rarely hinge on skill."

That wasn't a new one to Sora. Others had told him the tales, that the games were rigged, the milk bottles glued down or the softballs filled with cork. The basketball rims were too small and the tips of darts dulled.

“I don’t think that’s totally true,” Sora said. “I won the goldfish one a lot.”

More times than his mom wanted him to, looking back.

“If anyone has the determination to win a fixed game, it would be you,” Xehanort said.

Their conversation paused as they approached a miniature racetrack, yellowed bales of straw serving as makeshift seats. Sora sought a spot in the front row, the bale he chose no bigger than a loveseat. 

Xehanort’s fingers unlaced from his as they sat, giving Sora the opportunity to wipe his palm dry. Sora watched as Xehanort opened his bag and pulled a tube of lip balm from it, applying it with practiced ease. It left a pretty sheen on his lips, which looked smooth to begin with.

What was it like, being so responsible you used lip balm before your lips were a scaly and painful mess?

“Can I have that?” Sora asked. His lips were a scaly and painful mess.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Xehanort said, placing it in Sora’s hand.

The balm was still warm from Xehanort’s lips as Sora smeared it on. It didn’t taste fun and fruity or tempt him to lick at it, which was for the best. That was usually a major contributor to his lips getting to the state they were currently in.

“Thanks a million,” Sora said, handing it back. He hoped his lips looked half as soft and inviting as Xehanort’s did.

Really, stupidly inviting.

The announcer’s voice over the speakers pulled Sora’s attention away before he could stare much longer. The pigs lined up at the start were pink and plump and wearing colored bandanas, each an immediate favorite. Sora mentally bet on them all to win.

They remained winners purely in his heart because none of them made it to the finish line.

The beginning had been promising, the pigs bolting at the opening of the starting gates, but ten yards in one pig decided it liked a life behind gates better. Another became sidetracked by a greasy wrapper that had blown onto the track. The last two peed and became unshakably fascinated with what the other had done.

“This is a four-way tie,” Sora said. “Which means I win four times.”

“You can’t bet on them all. That’s tantamount to cheating.”

“As if, I was putting myself in extra danger of losing.”

Four wins versus two losses. Suck it, carnival. All it took was thinking outside the box.

Xehanort stood as the announcer stepped onto the track to wrangle the wayward pigs, Sora following suit as they began to wander once more. He shoved his hands in his pockets. They hadn’t stopped sweating yet and he didn’t want to risk sliming Xehanort.

“What are the chances someone would notice if I used my keyblade as a mallet?” Sora asked, still thinking outside the box.

“And break your own rules?” Xehanort responded, affecting a scandalized tone.

Sora’s pockets were damp as he balled his hands within them. Yeah, that was one of his rules. Rules that weren’t serving him all that well. They’d applied in his mind to a single afternoon and nothing longer.

No keyblades was easy, as was no mean mugging. But the strict lack of work talk had hampered Sora’s words as he worried what that meant and what it applied to.

Were Kairi and Riku _work_? Was Destiny Islands _work_? And what of his plans for the future or places he’d visited in the past? Who was he outside these things?

Once, he thought of being Sora and being a hero as two different things. He was the former and took on the mantle of the latter. When things were better, lives protected and worlds mended, he took it off.

But things never were better. One solution led to another problem. Where he went changed, but what he did didn’t. There was no time to be Sora anymore. Each moment as himself meant a moment others were in danger.

Somewhere along the way he’d stopped removing the mantle. It became too heavy to discard and no one offered to take it. Even now it weighed him down, this time set aside for himself still based on the level of good it could produce.

But it didn’t feel good to watch his words, to pretend that his life had not become his work. Harder than being a hero was pretending he could go back to just being Sora.

There was a sign for the butterfly room ahead, and Sora looked at it instead of at Xehanort when he spoke.

“My rules were sorta dumb,” Sora said.

“Because they won’t let you win a rigged game?”

“I’m being serious.”

Xehanort regarded Sora with unobtrusive interest, his silence an open solicitation of explanation. But there was no needling urgency or demand for more. Sora liked having the extra time to think.

‘Room’ was an understatement for what they walked into.

The walls were high and the ceiling was domed, all of it glass. There were trees, willowy and stunted, sunlight streaming through their canopy. Water trickled through man-made streams, rocks and potted plants with placards lining paved roads that wound through the indoor garden.

Sora stopped to stare at the whole of it. There was a sea of flowers he’d never seen before and dozens of butterflies decorating them. Picking where to start was impossible. 

When he stayed as rooted as the trees, Xehanort cleared his throat. Sora came back to himself to find an arm offered to him. Sora looped his through it, appreciative of his gentleman escort.

They walked through the garden with endless leisure, the air cool and misters going. They stepped their way around the errant butterflies that landed on the ground, and stopped to appreciate the ones that landed on each other.

Xehanort read the placards to Sora and got all the names right, including the sciencey ones. Or he claimed as much. Sora would have liked any pronunciation as long as Xehanort was the one saying it. 

The timbre of his voice had a rich thrum to it, his tone confident in all that he said. He could convince Sora of the bimbostratus all over again.

By the end of the personal tour Sora had found the words he wanted to say. He got them out as they left the garden, the outside heat jarring.

“No more rules on what we talk about,” Sora announced.

“And the other rules?” Xehanort asked.

“Still in place.”

“Not even if breaking them helps you win?”

“Not even if it helps me win,” Sora said.

* * *

**Bonus**

Xehanort claimed he didn’t want to go into the petting zoo. Physically, Sora could believe. Spiritually, there was no denying. Xehanort’s version of a straight line had a funny drift to it that led them off the path and towards a picnic table. The surface was stained with water rings and what Sora suspected was a lot of relish.

The petting zoo was within eyesight.

“I’m getting kinda thirsty, you want anything?” Sora asked.

“Whatever you say,” Xehanort murmured.

His voice was dreamy with distraction, his body seated at the table but his attention far from it. Sora had lost him to the mess of animals puttering inside their enclosure before them. Sora couldn’t fault him. The miniature cows were hard to tear his eyes away from.

But he did it for the greater good.

One iced tea and a soda slurry later, Sora came back to an empty table. He set their drinks down and glanced around to find Xehanort had migrated closer to the petting zoo, his hands resting on the gate.

Sora padded over, head tilted to see what had arrested his interest in particular. A baby goat frolicked with boneless joy, falling as often as it jumped and bouncing up without injury.

It was nearly as cute as Xehanort, unaware of a world outside his view as Sora neared. The urge to touch at Xehanort’s elbow rose to Sora’s mind as he closed the last few feet between them, but they’d done that already.

Elbow touching? Old hat.

Hugging? A new, fancy hat that Sora wanted to try on.

He slipped his arms around Xehanort’s waist, noting a damp mark at the small of his back. Sora’s forearms settled across Xehanort’s stomach, drawing him closer lightly, their difference in height a belated fact as Sora’s face bumped directly between Xehanort’s shoulder blades.

Xehanort went rigid, his muscles wonderfully apparent as they tensed. Sora turned his head to keep from being muffled.

“Not huggy?”

“I’m sweaty…” Xehanort mumbled.

“Oh no, the horror,” Sora said dramatically. “It’s on me now! I guess it’s too late to stop.”

Sora went back to nosing between Xehanort’s shoulder blades. Yeah, he was sweaty. It made Xehanort smell way good, all human and alive. Kind of like warm skin— which he had— and sort of spicy but not. 

Was that musk? Or pheromones. If those had a smell.

Whatever it was, Sora liked it. He allowed himself a tame huff as he hugged Xehanort tighter and tighter until he made a funny _hurk_ noise and Sora loosened up. One of Xehanort’s hands rested on Sora’s arm, thumbing faint scars from battles that blended together.

They’d added to the water stains on the table before they remembered their drinks, the ice mostly melted as they set off down a line of unexplored stalls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bonus didn't flow well from the end of this chapter and into the next, hence it being... a bonus. For the many scenes that are removed to make for a cohesive read, I was not going to take out Xehanort getting to see a baby goat.


	15. Chapter 15

Sora had no use for a fog machine, but he did have a need for one. The fog machine booth taught him this, with its sweet chemical clouds and strobing lights. They were having a sale. Buy one get one mostly free.

“And where will you be putting this?” Xehanort asked.

Sora stood with his hands on his hips, debating between the onyx black fog machine and the obsidian black fog machine. Maybe Mr. Taupe could tell the difference between the two colors. Or Sora could buy both. It’d be a steal.

“I’ll make room for it, don’t worry.”

“You said the same about the hot tubs.”

Sora let out a wistful sigh at the reminder of the previous booth. The salesman totally got him, and got that he did need the biggest tub with the most jets and a built-in cooler. Then Xehanort had harshed it all by asking where it was going to go.

“Why don’t we first see if you spot any other needs? You wouldn’t want to buy anything now and find something better later on.”

“As if anything could be better than a fog machine,” Sora snorted, but he listened.

There could be a hot tub with a built-in fog machine.

The list of no-use-but-needs snowballed as they went from one stall to the next. Added to it was a rhinestone cowboy hat, a military grade juicer, and a jet ski he couldn’t actually buy but could win, if only he gave them his full name, address, number, and a hundred other things in such fine print he got bored reading it.

“I can’t pick between them all,” Sora whined as the stalls petered out to give them a new array of games to play.

“There’s time yet to decide,” Xehanort said.

Sora nodded. Buying things was well and good, but now that they were back to games he had a better idea than forking over big wads of dough. Little wads he could part with.

“I bet I could win something here.”

Xehanort stopped and looked ready to wheel around, eccentric purchases be damned.

“We’ve had this conversation already. Your skills, commendable as they are, are irrelevant.” 

“Hey, don’t forget the part where you said if anyone could still win, it’d be me,” Sora pointed out.

“Words I did not intend to be taken as encouragement.”

“C’mon, there has to be one fair game around here,” Sora said. “Let’s go find it.”

It was Sora’s turn to reach for Xehanort’s hand, clasping it tightly before pulling him towards the excitement.

* * *

The clowns from the map were real. Realish. They existed not as living, breathing beings, but as targets. They had teeth like piano keys, all ready to be knocked out of their gaping mouths by a waiting row of water guns.

The price to play was steep, but the sign above it promised a winner in every round. The stuffed animals that hung in garlands dwarfed Sora. One sat on a seat before the game, propped as if it were going to play.

The operator from the high striker game was waiting with an open hand when Sora went to pay.

“Hey, I know you!”

“What can I say, I’m a busy person,” the operator said, pocketing the money. “And it looks like you’re still busy trying to impress a certain someone.”

The taunt slid off Sora as he took his place beside the oversized plushie. He gripped his gun as he leaned in to see through the sights. They didn’t line up right with the nozzle no matter how he squinted.

The operator moved Sora’s neighbor and took its seat before mirroring Sora’s position.

“Wait, you’re playing too?”

“What fun is a race if you’re running alone?” the operator asked. “Can’t win if you don’t have competition.”

“I’d like to enter myself,” Xehanort said.

Sora and the operator turned to look at him in equal surprise.

Money changed hands and Xehanort sat at Sora’s other side.

“Seeing as how I’m already here, wouldn’t hurt to keep playing with the two of you,” the operator said.

“I presumed as much,” Xehanort said.

Seeing Xehanort hunched over a water gun did a number on Sora’s brain. He barely managed to look away in time for the buzzer to sound, water squirting from the nozzle as he automatically pulled the trigger. He hit his clown more in the eyes than the mouth and his gun wobbled on its platform as he tried to adjust it.

When he did hit its teeth, the water washed them more than shot them. The pressure was low, more on par with a toy sprinkler than the jettison of the other guns. The operator had knocked three teeth out by the time Sora felled one.

A winner every round may have been true, but the sign never promised who would win.

Sora gripped his gun tighter in the useless hope it would help. It gave a low and groaning creak, the sound oddly lengthy. His tongue was lazy in his mouth and reluctant to leave when he licked his lips. 

The water flowed slower.

His hands were slow too, his fingers lethargic when he moved them. The race had gone from a sprint to dragging crawl. The hammering of his own heart went on, but each beat was farther and farther apart.

Something that made no noise was louder than his pulse. Louder than the carnival. It was heavy and oppressive, taking one second and rolling it like dough, thinning it into five.

Time expanded, then gave a rubber band snap as it contracted.

Sora lived each second that had passed and each that stretched before him, and he lived them all at once. Sounds overlapped into a blaring clang, the sweat on Sora’s brow cold as his heartbeat caught up.

The passing of normal seconds was now too fast and frantic.

The clanging remained and lights flashed. They came from Xehanort’s clown, its maw a blackened void. Sora gave him a breathy word of congratulations, floundering in the dazed wake he’d been left in.

“I believe I’ve won,” Xehanort said.

“Funny, that,” the operator said.

The operator didn’t look much better off than Sora felt, their balance not fully centered as they stumbled behind the counter of the booth and pulled a box from under it. They dropped it with a clatter in front of Xehanort and pulled the lid off.

It was brimming with plastic rings beset with gaudy jewels.

“Prizes for the picking.”

“I’d prefer one of the stuffed animals,” Xehnort said without looking at the box.

The operator looked up and gave a low whistle.

“So does everyone else, boss. Problem is, that takes ten wins. But these?” The box was jostled. “One.”

Sora did the math in his head. Slowly, and then again. It’d be cheaper to buy a stuffed animal than it would be to win one by… a lot.

Xehanort had his wallet open.

“Love your enthusiasm,” the operator said, taking a step back. “But I’ve got a lunch break to get started on. There are some fried oreos with my name on them.”

Xehanort blindly picked a ring from the box, favoring eye contact with the operator over it. The box was snatched back and stuffed under the counter. The operator high-tailed it without a pause for goodbyes, hat bobbing as they hustled.

Sora sighed.

Everyday people didn’t need to understand magic to sense it. The most basic of elements could be explained. Freak lightning or spontaneous combustion, throw in a dash of flash flooding. Unexpected, yet believable.

But time hijinks?

There was no reasoning away the bone-deep discomfort that came with that. That magic didn’t happen around them, but to them. To Sora, too. His sweat remained cold in the summer heat.

Was it better that Xehanort had used magic over something so small, or worse on account of it?

Whichever it was, there was no apology in his eyes or mention of his actions on his tongue.

Maybe this wasn’t a big deal.

Xehanort was thinking outside the box. He’d found a way to win an unwinnable game, and no one was hurt in the process. Disturbed, sure. But the operator hadn’t been playing fair either.

Being a fuddy-duddy wet blanket wasn’t Sora’s style, and the carnival wasn’t the best place to have a crash course in the ethics of magic. Who even knew if Xehanort realized what he had done?

Nothing about his quiet gaze suggested he did.

It became a lot less important when Xehanort took Sora’s hand and slid the cheap ring onto his finger. The heart-shaped gem it displayed was colored a delightful fuschia, and the whole of it glittered when Sora turned his hand this way and that.

_Heat of the moment,_ Sora told himself, his own heart softening. _A one off._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Considering how much munny I end each game with, there's no way Sora isn't loaded. Let him make irresponsible purchases.


	16. Chapter 16

Xehanort wasn’t partial to carnival rides, and after eating a funnel cake as big as his head, Sora wasn’t either. He’d spent good money on his food and intended to keep it inside his stomach.

The sugary meal had left Sora far from reenergized. The time spent sitting down allowed his brain to notice the burgeoning aches in his body as hot spots on his feet warned him of impending blisters.

He hadn’t shaken off being time-bamboozled entirely, either.

But he did feel better when he looked at his ring in all its cheap glory, the silver of it already chipping away to reveal the black plastic beneath.

“Is there anything else you wanted to do?” Xehanort asked.

A mechanical bull called to Sora in the distance, but his stomach curdled to think of being tossed about.

“Being here and all, we should go on a ride,” Sora said, holding up a hand when Xehanort’s expression went stony. “No roller coasters.”

“And no drops?”

“No drops, no roller coasters.”

“Which leaves us with…?” Xehanort asked.

“Beats me, but we’ll find something. There has to be a baby ride or two around here,” Sora said.

It was with no little effort that he summoned the strength to stand, the hot spots on his feet that much more apparent as he and Xehanort walked over to the rides. Sora bumped into Xehanort more than once as he shuffled along, sluggish from a sugar crash that arrived with no rush to make it worthwhile.

Along with roller coasters and drop rides, the no-go list grew to encompass bumper cars, tilt-a-whirl, and the spinning swings. They got in line for the pirate ship, then nixed it when it arced into an ongoing series of flips.

With their options running low, Sora was considering another round on the Ferris wheel. It would allow him to sit and not think, which had a renewed appeal as he tired. It’d be preferable to whatever ride was tucked away in this last corner they were exploring, not a single person in line, the operator busy scrolling on their phone.

Sora looked at its sign without reading it. It was bleached to an off-white by the sun. The letters sloped in extravagant loops of cursive, the gold leafing that shadowed them flaked off in patches. A few hand-painted hearts were splattered on it as an afterthought.

“Interested?” Xehanort asked.

“Huh?” Sora said, looking to Xehanort. “Sorry, tunnel vision.”

“How apt.”

Sora looked back to the sign. 

_Tunnel of Love._

On the ride's platform, an empty swan-shaped boat drifted by.

“Could be fun,” Sora said, making a bee line for the operator.

He had his money out before he reached the platform, barely looking at the cost of admission. It was dirt cheap and he bought two rounds for himself and Xehanort, who trailed behind with a good-natured look in his eyes and a curve to his lips.

Sora stood beside the boat and held his hand out to Xehanort, insistingly chivalrous on helping him in. It went better in Sora’s head, because in his head the boat was not constantly moving at a snail’s pace while he tried to follow it.

He liked helping Xehanort in nonetheless, his palm resting lightly on Sora’s for the swiftest of seconds before he was stepping into the boat and giving a quiet word of thanks. Sora’s entrance was not half as graceful, the boat knocking against the sidings of the track as he hopped in.

He sank into his seat beside Xehanort as the boat steadied itself, the sharp chemical scent of treated water reviving him as surely as smelling salts. The track ticked and clunked as it shipped them closer to the opening of the tunnel. It was haloed in twinkling red lights, what lay beyond it in total darkness.

An electric shiver went through Sora as it swallowed them up, the light at their backs disappearing as they were pulled deeper. The tunnel became cavernous to him, the smells concentrating to the point of being eye-watering with their acrid sting.

The water echoed around them at all angles, the churning of it amplified.

Sora huddled himself close to Xehanort’s side, closer yet when Xehanort lifted an arm to rest over his shoulders. He fitted beneath it to perfection. The second electric shiver that ran through Sora was more pleasant than its predecessor.

A dim glow arose down the tunnel, growing in size but not strength as they approached. The track brought them around a bend to a scene of two figures, their skin waxy and reflective as they gazed into each other's eyes. They were bathed in an anemic pink light that was probably not meant to remind Sora of undercooked chicken.

An inappropriately festive love song played over the scene.

He gazed at the figures as the boat floated by, their clothing from a period he knew nothing of, their features stirring no recognition in him. But they looked as in love as two slapdash wax statues could be, hands clasped and hardly an inch between their bodies.

There was a sign with names and dates that was too difficult to read clearly in the low light. What he did make out was meaningless, the information failing to restore old memories of who they were.

It wasn’t a bad thing.

It let him concentrate on the people themselves, the boat ferrying them from one scene to the next. There were all sorts of people from different walks of life, from valiant knights and princesses to bog beasts and the women that loved them.

And while their names didn’t resonate with him, their actions did.

Each tender display made his heart lighter and warmer, the darkness between the scenes a time for him to reflect on them. He closed his eyes as he thought of the exchanges captured here for witness, from stolen moments in shaded bowers to overwrought wedding scenes with too many details to take any single one in completely.

His greatest fondness lay with the simplest. Spartan in their staging, their portrayal strictly of closeness between others. Their spotlight had been the brush of fingers or the fleeting exchange of lovestruck looks. Sora’s favorite was when the figures leaned in close, lips coming to rest together.

Now something was pressing to his lips, too. Soft and giving and not at all waxy. It all registered in waves and his reaction unfolded similarly. The shock arrived first, to be touched in the dark flaring an animal alarm.

Sora’s eyes flew open as he jerked back in surprise, the realization of what— and who— had been touching his lips arrived too slowly to stop him. His head bonked against the backrest of the boat, his squawk joining the other endless echoes of the tunnel.

The boat rocked from side to side at Sora’s jostling, the edges groaning as they knocked heavily against the guard rails. Sora froze in place as he entertained the impossible fear that it would capsize in twelve inches of water.

“You kissed me,” Sora said as the rocking settled. He didn’t know why he needed to announce it like that.

The boat teetered anew as Xehanort shied away, his face shadowed and expression unreadable.

“Was I not supposed to?” he asked.

“My eyes were closed!”

Sora didn’t intend to shout, but it happened anyway. He was excited, and peculiarly so. All his little neurons or nerves or whatever were getting the message out, then passing it around again. It was hot gossip he couldn’t keep to himself and needed to yell to the universe at large.

“I thought they were closed because you wanted to kiss.”

Xehanort’s voice was low, the honey of it lacking. He sounded a little defensive and a lot confused.

“I don’t want you to not kiss me,” Sora clumsily explained with minimal shouting.

A light appeared at the end of the tunnel as it came into sight. From it, Sora could see Xehanort’s eyes were uncharacteristically blank.

It would have been prudent to clarify to Xehanort that he hadn’t been wrong, but that would have taken _dozens_ of seconds and Sora needed to act right now or he’d start hollering again.

In one motion he fisted Xehanort’s top and hauled him in, lunging in that same moment to extinguish any possible space between them down to the last centimeter.

He centered his attention in full, lips pressed to Xehanort’s and keenly aware of it this time. He wanted to take in the experience, memorize the shape of Xehanort’s lips and how they moved against his. Would he melt into it, or surge forward?

But Sora was too busy finding out that a boat could capsize in twelve inches of water to take in the details.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sixteen chapters and they finally kiss.
> 
> Also, it turns out I'd been using motel and hotel in this story for reasons unknown. It is a motel and I've gone back and corrected the odd 'hotel' that crops up here and there.


	17. Chapter 17

There was a lot to see at the beach. Soggy kelp, sea glass, the clay-colored bruise on Xehanort’s forearm, and a piece of driftwood that was begging to be hauled around. Sora picked it up to appease his animal brain and dragged it in a lazy line behind him.

“Sorry for getting us booted,” Sora said.

They hadn’t finished their first round through the Tunnel of Love, let alone been allowed to go on their second. No refunds, tough luck. Sora wasn’t bothered about that. The leftover tickets would make for good souvenirs once they were dry.

“We saw all we needed to,” Xehanort said.

He looked at his new bruise while Sora didn’t, invested as he was in his new stick. He stabbed into the sand, dodging the surf as it filled in the hole left behind. His blisters stung from a previous encounter he’d failed to avoid.

“How did you like it?” Xehanort asked.

He was close, head canted with interest. His voice wasn’t entirely back to its old self.

“I liked it a lot,” Sora said, unsure if Xehanort meant the kissing or the carnival. To cover his bases he added, “The whole everything.”

The tension in Xehanort’s bearing ebbed at the reassurance, but something in his eyes remained. A light that had surfaced as they strolled here, a flickering concern whenever Sora caught him looking.

It didn’t take a genius to guess he was worried about hometown talk.

And he had a right to be.

Already Sora was concocting conversation, organizing his thoughts and feelings into neat little sentences and bite-sized blabbering. Another rehearsal and they’d be ready for debut.

Until then Sora kicked at the sand.

The adrenaline from their watery excursion was wearing off and it left him as tired as he’d been before it. When he was tired, he was mopey. When he was mopey, he wanted to go home.

But he couldn’t and this was the next best thing.

They could turn around now, leave before he made things awkward. Who was to say that it was concern in Xehanort’s eyes, and not dread? The sword of Damocles that was Destiny Islands was hanging over his head, and it was up to Sora if he would cut the thread or not.

But turning around meant going back to the motel, to which his feet protested. They were as worn out as the rest of him, scuffing up sand as they were dragged along. Sora would have liked it if he could stop everything and lay down where he stood.

There would be no moving him from the spot, the tide washing over him for a personal eternity. He’d welcome the surf as it found all the jagged bits that hurt the most in these moments, wearing them down into something ineffectual, if not fetching.

Broken parts worn into sea glass.

If it could wash away the funky chemical carnival water smell that was clinging to his clothes, he’d consider it a bonus.

Xehanort stooped as Sora brooded, fingers skimming over the sand as he brushed away rocks and long vacated shells. What he found he held aloft toward Sora, face upturned as he stayed low to the ground.

Sora reached absently to take it. Xehanort pulled back.

“I’m comparing,” Xehanort said.

Sora blinked as he took the time to look. It was a piece of sea glass, cobalt blue and frosted. Xehanort glanced from it to Sora, then back again.

“It complements your eyes,” Xehanort said, answering a question Sora hadn’t formed into words.

Sora smiled. He’d find one to match Xehanort’s if he wasn’t so exhausted.

“I think I’m gonna sit for a bit, but don’t let me get in the way of your beachcombing,” Sora said, dropping to the sand. He rested his stick in his lap.

“Do rest some, I won’t be long,” Xehanort said.

He slipped the glass into his bag before starting off to the next glimpse of color along the shoreline. Sora watched him pick over new patches of sand, scrutinizing his finds before stowing them away or returning them to their resting place.

He had the air of a child looking for lizards, no stone safe from grabbing hands wanting to search beneath them.

Sora flopped onto his side as Xehanort strayed further, vision blurring as his cheek was squished. He couldn’t see Xehanort’s face, but his movements held the natural grace that spoke of little forethought, no grand plan in mind as he scouted for treasure.

It suited him, and his body. A body Sora wondered why anyone would want to ditch. Dead sculptors would probably go full zombie and shamble over if they knew what a muse they were missing out on here.

Plus Xehanort was really, ultra, unfairly hot in a way that made Sora want to bite him.

More animal brain, Sora figured, all primitive and implacable and having excellent ideas.

Xehanort turned back as he verged on becoming a blob, indistinct as an old memory. Sora hauled himself to his feet and cast his stick away for other animal brains to enjoy. He’d meet Xehanort halfway.

It gave Sora an excuse to do more staring than he usually would, lost in admiring the thoughtful expression on Xehanort’s face as the distance between them closed. It spurred a dormant recollection within Sora, took him back to their encounter at Destiny Islands as he’d dreamed it.

What a short-lived thing that had been, no immediate threat at his throat as they sat on the beach. Xehanort had shared himself then, no apparent distaste for his home present as he elaborated on his plans with a gentle patience that matched his gentle expression.

What had changed since then? It was a question Sora pushed away as they came back under the sword.

Xehanort took it upon himself before Sora could.

“Why is it you want so badly to return?” Xehanort asked.

“Oh, wow,” Sora said in non-answer. He needed to process that Xehanort had gone there, though his face said he was surprised as Sora that he’d done so.

“You needn’t answer,” Xehanort offered, going from surprised to stricken.

“It’s not like that. I never gave it a ton of thought aside from, I dunno, I want to.”

Xehanort nodded, beginning to walk in the direction of the motel. Sora kept in step with him, brow furrowed as he reflected on the question.

Destiny Islands was not beloved by him by virtue of being. Sky and sea existed elsewhere, the sand the same. It was the life he wanted to return to. Sunny days that sprawled endlessly before him, full of the promise of experience.

He’d looked forward to pilfering bird eggs atop palm trees and splintering wooden swords in the midst of great clashes. He loved scratching bright dreams onto dark cave walls.

Sure, the world hadn’t been simple, but it seemed simple. Darkness and light and the battle between them operated at a scale of cosmic grandeur. But back then, it hadn’t touched him or the people he cared about.

The shadow of his desire was selfish.

Sora didn’t want to live in unending ignorance to the worlds outside his own; his comfort was not worth their pain. Yet he wished their problems had encroached more slowly, and that his worries remained as superficial as bug bites and knee scrapes for a little while longer.

“I wasn’t done growing up,” was the answer Sora arrived on.

Xehanort hummed. Sora glanced at him.

“What about you?” Sora asked. “What made you so ready to leave?”

Xehanort needed no time to think of his answer.

“I could no longer grow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One person out there will read this and internally think, "That's not not the original point of the Sword of Damocles anecdote."
> 
> But I'm not writing about Greek politicians or feeling bad for people in positions of power so I'm using it in the modern, dreaded event sense. However, if you write it in the vein of the original I will read it. And please make it self-insert fic where the reader is sitting at Master Xehanort's dinner table. Xehanort's No Name keyblade is hanging above by a Nomura-approved but otherwise structurally unsound belt.
> 
> I am practically writing this for you.


	18. Chapter 18

After growing up with weird dreams, Sora appreciated when he got to have the normal, boring kind. Like the one he was currently having.

The dream was of himself, in the motel bed, sort of awake. The room was dim and leaning towards warm. The soft rustle of a co-star at the desk drew Sora’s bleary gaze. The lamp was on as Xehanort sorted through bits of sea glass on the table. He was hard to make out in the low light, dressed in his creep-coat.

Sora would’ve mistaken it for real life if it weren’t for the fact the old folded pizza napkin was making a cameo alongside the glass. It was a betrayal that his brain clung tightly to such a banal observation from that evening instead of a cooler one. Like how he’d faceplanted between Xehanort’s tits.

But he was stuck watching Xehanort as he stowed the napkin in his pocket with a secretive flick of the wrist. The sea glass followed suit and the lamp was turned off.

Weirdo.

Xehanort approached the bed in his dreamy glory, the broken-in leather of his boots creaking. He gazed down at Sora, who was trying to lucid dream this into a topless situation for either of them.

Preferably both.

“Go back to sleep, Sora,” Xehanort said.

“I am asleep,” Sora said, snuffling as he pushed the covers down.

He was no cooler for it as the back of Xehanort’s hand skimmed his cheek, his gloves worn and smooth. The shiver that ran through Sora was hot when Xehanort carded his mussed bangs back from his face.

Xehanort’s hand fell away as the hollow sound of darkness stole into the room. It carried a still-drying ink scent, words scratched on parchment. Dry and light.

But there was no parchment here.

This ink was spilled on plums overripe and just fallen from the tree, their sweetness not yet fetid. The edges of the corridor it came from were hazy, the insides alive and reaching.

“What are you doing?” Sora asked, tugging the covers back up to his chin.

“You’ll see,” Xehanort told him.

The playful mirth in his voice made Sora wonder if this dream was a nightmare in disguise. It turned him cold beneath the covers to recall where he’d heard it before, a delicate noise that often paired itself with devious plans Xehanort was eager to execute.

But when Xehanort leaned in and pressed his lips to Sora’s forehead before slipping into the darkness, it seemed a trivial thing.

* * *

Xehanort didn’t need to attend Sora’s School of Cuddling to learn the ways of a human blanket. It came naturally to him.

As did Sora’s discovery of this when he woke in the morning, his body pinned to the bed under a sizable weight. He peered down to find Xehanort fast asleep on top of him, his head resting against Sora’s chest. It rose and fell at a quickening speed as Sora’s vision cleared.

Sora wanted to stay like this, and he could have if Xehanort wasn’t also pressing on his bladder like an inconvenient lap cat.

Xehanort shifted, resting more of himself exactly where he wasn’t wanted with ungodly precision.

“Sorry, babe,” Sora said, mumbling the name he’d been working up to in his head. “This isn’t working that great.”

It was with the same care he’d move a cat that Sora eased Xehanort off him, all awkward angles and held breath. He worked in short bursts, shifting centimeters at a time, one eye trained on Xehanort as he watched for signs of stirring.

The extraction proved successful as Sora managed to roll Xehanort off, his long hair curtaining his features as he rested on his side. Sora delicately tucked it behind an ear and paused to study him.

Usually, Sora had the manners not to stare. But those manners extended to when the recipient was awake and could stare back. Now he was free to take in whole what he’d previously gotten in glimpses.

Splashed across the bridge of Xehanort’s nose were the freckles of a cardinal’s egg, barely darker than the rest of his skin. The shadows below his eyes remained as he slept, a faint branching of fine lines at their outsides. His eyebrows were meticulously uniform in a way that couldn’t be natural.

On his forearm was the bruise Sora had won him at the carnival, now flushed and vibrant with new colors. Sora dotted it with a kiss before finally getting out of bed.

* * *

Xehanort slept a long time, and deeply. He slept through the clattering fumble of body wash as Sora showered. He slept through Sora opening the bathroom door to say that everything was fine, totally fine, he hadn’t spilled anything. He slept through Sora’s ensuing cleanup to make his words truth.

And he slept through Sora asking if he wanted anything to eat.

Sora loitered around the room in case Xehanort sprang awake with an answer. He passed the time making the ongoing explosion of his bag into an organized mess and scoured the room for errant candy wrappers.

He found one on the desk by Xehanort’s shopping bag. He checked inside it to make sure none had snuck in, and not because he wanted to see the fancy letter opener again. It was in there along with one of Xehanort’s trademark hyper-folded receipts. No napkin.

Why would there be? It was trash.

* * *

Sora came back with breakfast in the form of a dozen pastries in a pink box. The bed was unoccupied, the covers seamlessly straightened and pillows impeccably fluffed.

He found Xehanort in the bathroom, freshly washed and finely dressed. There was sweetly scented oil on his hands as he raked his fingers through the length of his hair.

“Finally decided to join us?” Sora teased.

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” Xehanort said. Then added, “Does the floor in here seem slippery to you?”

“Nope,” Sora lied.

He went and put the bakery box on the desk, taking a croissant half the size of his head before coming back to stand in the door frame of the bathroom. Xehanort had moved on from his hair and was looking at his nail polish. The edges were chipped and pale outgrowth showed at their base.

Sora took a bite of his croissant as he looked over the bathroom counter. There were multiple hair brushes and fancy bottles. One of them was cologne.

“Sorry for wigging out on you the other day over that,” Sora said, gesturing at the cologne with his elbow.

“All is forgiven,” Xehanort said, picking the bottle up and holding it at arm’s length.

Sora went still where he stood as it was spritzed, bracing himself for resurgence of painful nostalgia at its scent. And how to explain in no uncertain terms he wasn’t going to apologize a second time for losing it.

The cologne settled in the air and it smelled like Xehanort, concentrated. All dry spice and skin and warmth.

“You have more than one cologne?”

Sora asked the question around a bready mouthful. He swallowed it along with the three variations of ‘asshole’ he was debating using in the earful he’d prepared to give Xehanort.

Xehanort nodded and put the cologne down, trading it for a comb.

“I’m not sure what I was thinking with that one, it wasn’t my usual style at all,” Xehanort said. He looked as if he were searching for a reason on the counter before announcing an octave too high, “An impulse buy.”

Xehanort began to comb through the ends of his hair in short strokes after that. It reminded Sora of how cats got when they were embarrassed, licking their paws as they pretended nothing had happened.

Sora popped the rest of his croissant in his mouth as he calculated how long he could get away with watching Xehanort be organized and pretty as he went about his routine. Excluding direct leering and including small talk, probably a while.

Indirect leering via the mirror was more acceptable and Sora’s first line of action. He leaned against the door frame as he did so, arms casually crossed. The angle afforded him a partial reflection of their mostly-made bed. He switched to it when he risked catching the questioning looks Xehanort was giving him.

“Did you need in here?” Xehanort asked.

“What? No,” Sora said. “I just wanted to make, like, some small talk.”

_Stare at you and make small talk,_ Sora thought. _Except the first made me forget how to do the second._

“About anything in particular?”

Xehanort’s voice came from the floor as he bent at the waist, hair flipped as he worked his fingers into the roots. 

Sora couldn’t see his reflection like that and went back to looking at the bed. His previous evaluation of mostly made had been generous. A crease ran through the middle, peaking in a lump.

It moved.

“Uh, the bed,” Sora finally answered, turning to look at it directly.

“Did you not sleep well?”

“Nothing like that,” Sora said, lowering his voice as he left Xehanort to walk nearer to the lump.

It… vibrated?

Sora took one corner of the corners and flung it back, ducking away in the same breath. Giant spider was his greatest fear, lost raccoon was his biggest dream.

The shrimp of a shadow that hunched beneath it did not fit on this scale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I needed to stress how small this shadow is because they are  
> [really absolutely enormous](https://i.imgur.com/oXsqbaB.jpg). (I know the scale in Data Greeting can be off but I did double check and the ones in the wild are the same size.)


	19. Chapter 19

The shadow had an impressively alarmed face for something with minimal features. Two eyes, opened wide. Two little saucers all the better to see you with.

Sora’s fingers twitched when the shadow’s antenna did, his keyblade in his hands before he thought to summon it.

He didn’t think as he raised it over his head either, reflexive in the lead up to his attack. His reflexes went off the track as his downswing was stopped short of its target, Xehanort’s hand grabbing the stem of his keyblade and twisting it— and Sora’s wrist— away.

Sora released it at the swift suggestion of pain, shaking his hand out as his nerves lit up.

“No keyblades,” Xehanort said sharply.

“Ugh, right,” Sora said, rubbing his wrist. What a time to be a stickler.

The shadow stayed where it was, antennae perked as it made no move to flee. Sora’s eyes darted around the room for a weapon, his groaning inward as he found the shadow was between him and the nightstand lamp.

His eyes fell to the floor and cast about there in desperation, coming to rest on his jelly sandals.

It was better than nothing.

Sora made a dash for them, snatching one up before he whirled around. Xehanort was behind him, close enough to take up the entirety of Sora’s vision as they came face-to-face. Face-to-chest, really.

“Sora, stop.”

There was a command to Xehanort’s voice that made Sora bristle.

“Hello? Are you not seeing what I am?” Sora asked.

He didn’t wait for an answer, making to duck around Xehanort and give the heartless a thrashing. A jelly sandal wasn’t much in the way of strength, but if he rubbed it a bunch maybe he could give the shadow blisters like the ones they had given his feet.

At three feet away he was caught around the waist, hooked as he lunged forward. His breath continued on while the rest of him was hauled backwards, his wheeze startled and short.

Sora had the awareness of a fighter, a brain that calculated on instinct. He knew he was going to fall before it happened, his balance jarred away by another. Sora also had the split second decision-making that was unique to the acutely petulant.

He took Xehanort down with him.

They came crashing to the floor. Sora lost breath he didn’t know he’d had left. The sharp points of his body flared with pain, elbows and knees their hotspots. He clutched his sandal all the while, stretching his arm to keep it from being snatched away.

Xehanort grabbed at his wrist, grip unduly tight and reawakening the sting he’d created after twisting Sora’s keyblade away.

Sora dropped the sandal, but he didn’t give up.

He recovered his wits along with his breath, panting and wriggling as he found the up and down of the world. Xehanort had beat him to the up. His weight kept Sora on the down. He was solid and heavy, all of him pressed to Sora to still him.

“Would you stop being such a belligerent little worm?” Xehanort said, a dark authority in his words.

Sora wormed harder as his blood pumped hotter.

“We have to at least get that thing outta here,” Sora gasped. The weight on his chest lifted some. “I’ll toss it outside, okay?”

Jelly sandal torture was a bit overboard.

“Oh, outside?” Xehanort asked. “Outside, where people are? That outside?”

Sora’s fervor chilled into dread, his squirming tapering off. 

“What if they’re outside already? We need to go—” Sora pleaded. “I’ll check the other rooms. I’ll use my keyblade and you can use yours. No rules.”

Xehanort stared down at him, unmoved. He didn’t appear enthused to go after his own.

“Look, just get off me. You can plug your ears and I’ll finish what I find in a spell or two.”

“No,” Xehanort said.

“What do you mean ‘no?’” Sora asked. “I can’t not do my job!”

It struck him that Xehanort was also doing _his_ job.

Xehanort continued to stare down at him, his sigh barely flickering over Sora’s skin. Sora broke eye contact first, uneasy in the face of Xehanort’s quiet. If he’d set this up, he wasn’t all that gleeful with how things were playing out.

On the bed, the shadow did little beyond mosey senselessly.

Xehanort sat up, but did not get off Sora. Knees stayed on either side of Sora’s hips.

“You’d burn fields for but a flower,” Xehanort said.

“What the heck’s that supposed to mean?”

“You see one heartless and you’re ready to turn the town upside down.”

“So? This place could be crawling with them,” Sora argued.

“Does it sound like it?” Xehanort countered.

Sora paused, ears straining to listen to the world outside their room. Ocean breeze whistled through a gap in their window, a gull squalling above it. No screams or stampeding. No cries for help.

Sora thinned his lips and looked askance. Being wrong never felt good, even if it was good to be wrong.

“Now,” Xehanort said, dipping forward to kiss Sora’s forehead. “I am going to finish getting ready.”

Sora sought the outstretched hand that was offered, the strength with which Xehanort pulled Sora to his feet reassuring when it wasn’t being used against him. Their fingers knitted with affection for a moment before Xehanort’s hand was dropping away as he turned back to the bathroom.

He spoke as he walked.

“Don’t you dare harm that darling creature.”

He wasn’t looking at Sora when he said it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't notice how short this chapter was until I went to post it, but I promise our new friend will be around more in the next.


	20. Chapter 20

“This is my side,” Sora said. He sat cross-legged and gestured to the majority of the bed. “And this? Is for you.”

He pointed at the shadow, then at the foot of the bed. The shadow followed the direction of his finger, comprehended nothing, and inched closer to him. Its little claws were alive and terrible, moving more than the rest of it.

These were not piano hands. They were whatever was the opposite and most bad. These were plastic recorder hands.

“My side,” Sora reiterated.

It had no concept of property lines.

Sora blew on the shadow’s face, trying to turn it back. It squinted against his attack, swatting ineffectually at the air but otherwise undeterred.

“Fine,” Sora said, clapping his hands on his knees. “Come get a piece of me.”

It lost interest at his invitation, head turning to stare off into the distance. It searched for something unknowable as it canvased the end of the bed. Sora watched it with nothing better to do, lazily following its blobby shape.

He’d never looked at them all that closely. Certainly not this closely. They tended to be target practice to him, dark marks that needed to be rubbed out. Their tiny bodies were full of malice and spite and if he didn’t take them out first, they’d take him.

All that spite was making it put on airs, conducting itself as a harmless splotch with a questionable center of balance that sent it wobbling after its head, which wobbled after its antennae. Beneath it’s skin— if that’s what it was— a trembling pulsed. It made the shadow hazy and difficult to focus on.

The shadow made its way to the edge of the bed, round head nearly sailing over before reeling away. Sora tensed as he watched, leaning to one side in an attempt to guide it back by force of will before it could fall overboard.

With a head that big it must have had a brain in there somewhere. Whatever it thought about, self preservation wasn’t part of it as it stumbled towards the other side of the bed.

It did not reel back this time as it pitched over the edge. 

Sora sprang forward, limbs tangled and clumsy as he dove for the shadow. He grabbed at it with one hand, stomach flush to the mattress and arm outstretched in a desperate save. The shadow’s rendezvous with gravity was prematurely ended as Sora hauled it back.

The shadow was pleasantly cool to the touch, as if Sora had stuck his hand in a patch of shade. But there was nothing so insubstantial about its body. It was jelly and velvet at once, hide smooth and not yet coalesced.

The trembling beneath its skin quickened as Sora held it at arm’s length.

“How do I know if this thing is sick?” Sora called out.

“Is it dead?” Xehanort called back.

The shadow’s legs paddled lazily at the air.

“No,” Sora answered.

“Then it’s fine.”

Sora frowned and put the shadow back on the bed. It collapsed in a heap, antennae back to twitching before it reoriented itself and stood. Its attention was back on him, coming at Sora with scrambling steps as he wriggled backwards until he hit the headboard.

“Don’t get any big ideas,” Sora said.

One of its claws fell on his leg.

“I’m telling you, that didn’t make us friends.”

Its other claw fell on him as it hauled itself up, leaving a burst of pinpricks in its path as it climbed into his lap. Its antennae came to a rest as it found this a suitable spot, body lax as it became a heap once more. Its eyes stayed wide as Sora looked at it.

“I didn’t say you could sit there,” Sora said.

He didn’t move it. Not that he didn’t want to. He totally could. But it was dumb and doing the worst job ever staying alive, given it had crawled into his lap of all people. His lap. Outright chose it.

They were both better off if it stayed put, far from the edge of the bed. And now that Sora was thinking about it, this would make for good bragging rights.

_You busted up five heartless in a single strike? That’s nice. I tamed one. Had it crawl right into my lap, didn’t need to lift a finger. I’m just that good._

Its trembling weakened as its eyes began to close and its antennae drooped. Sora kept silent to keep from breaking its sleepy spell.

Xehanort did that for him.

“What an incorrigible ham.”

The shadow’s antennae shot up and its head followed the sound of Xehanort’s voice now that he’d returned.

“I’m not a ham,” Sora said. “It picked me!”

“And I was addressing it,” Xehanort noted, sitting on the bed beside him.

Whatever he’d done in the bathroom made him look less tired.

“Why is it like… this?” Sora asked, pointing at the trembling renewed.

The shadow clamored off his lap and into Xehanort’s, pressing itself readily against his palm when offered. Its antennae flattened as Xehanort stroked its head, its eyes dragged backwards with its enthusiasm to push against him.

“That is its heartbeat,” Xehanort said.

It was such an obvious answer that Sora hadn’t considered it. He knew the heartless to be an oxymoron in their naming, but he rarely thought of what beat inside them. He thought of their hearts only once they were free and glimmering, detached from darkness.

“You were a heartless once, were you not?” Xehanort asked.

It was asked out of courtesy and they both knew it. Sora wouldn’t be surprised if Xehanort had a better idea of what happened than he did, and a whole speech he could give on it.

“That happened ages ago,” Sora said. “I don’t remember it well.”

He remembered it too well and in all the ways he wished he didn’t. The world around him towering, the movements in his mind human, translating all wrong to his new body as he barreled about the castle.

Words hadn’t formed as he ran, not even in his mind. Darkness was louder than that. Louder than him. It blotted out the person he’d been, painted over the memories of his life and his friends.

It made him something more than himself, something bigger and hungrier and driven to go on. It led him in his confusion, gave him a bright and burning purpose with an end he could not understand, but would know when he reached it.

Sora was not special. He was not chosen. He was not meant to be here or come this far. He was not stronger than others who had fallen before him.

Above all, he was not immune to this change.

Then he’d heard Kairi, and she was brighter than any darkness. Blinding.

He’d been scared all the while, and it scared him now.

Kairi had been able to recognize him, but the others hadn’t. Would he be able to recognize a friend in the same position, or would he strike them down?

Sora rubbed his hands over his face. He wasn’t cut out for this thinking stuff. That was Xehanort’s realm.

“Do you know who that is— er, was, I guess,” Sora asked “Like, the person?”

“I do not,” Xehanort said.

Sora _humphed_. He’d been expecting an emphatic yes and a retelling of their life story. But they lived up to their name, no more than a shadow. Unimportant.

Important to someone, at some point. They’d been a friend, even if they hadn’t been his.

Sora reached over and fished the shadow from Xehanort’s lap, the heartless giving a sleepy wriggle before he settled it against his chest. Sora couldn’t imagine what they’d looked like and the life they’d led.

He’d been able to come back, so why couldn’t they? Or were they too far gone, bits and pieces missing, little left to be restored?

Sora wondered if all of him had come back, too. Sometimes he also wondered if he’d come back with extra. Riku was stronger for his not-too-hot date with darkness, the lasting effects of it apparent in his magic.

But it seemed to have overlooked Sora. Nothing special, just like Sora.

* * *

“Did you have anything in mind you wanted to do today?” Xehanort asked.

He pet the shadow when Sora wasn’t, but Sora wanted Xehanort to pet him instead. He had two hands, it wasn’t a big request. And he had an unoccupied mouth.

“Kissing,” Sora said, lips moving faster than he could lie.

A lot of kissing, to be precise. The shadow hanging around had been a roadblock to that. Sora tried to circumvent it by putting it in the bathroom when Xehanort had been distracted by breakfast, but its claws had scrabbled under the door. 

Then the rest of it oozed out.

It stared at them, an unwelcome chaperone on their days-long date.

“How fortuitous that your plans should coincide with my own,” Xehanort said.

He stopped petting the shadow, setting it on the floor like a dog that wasn’t allowed on the bed. Sora sat up with a keen interest, eyes locking onto Xehanort. Xehanort, who was not kissing him at once, but grabbing his lip balm from the nightstand.

“Gimme,” Sora said, watching Xehanort apply it with a practiced flick of the wrist.

Sora’s demand was ignored as Xehanort leaned in. His lips were warm satin, the balm transferring from him to Sora. The exchange delighted Sora, his laughter light as he threw his arms around Xehanort and dragged him in.

His breath smelled like the blueberry muffin Sora had bought him, and his lips tasted just as good as Sora brought them to his.

While their first kiss had been a clumsy thing done in the dark, it hadn’t been Sora’s first-first kiss. He didn’t think it was Xehanort’s either. The way he tilted his head was what came with natural practice, how he cupped Sora’s face a mix of confidence and a waning self control.

But it was their first time really kissing, and with it came the enthusiasm that trampled any rhythm. Their timing was individual, the ebb and flow mismatched. Sora kissed Xehanort’s teeth more than once, and when Xehanort bit his lip it was hard to tell if it was an accident or not.

Sora knew how to kiss, but he didn’t know how Xehanort liked to kiss. 

He wanted to learn as soon as possible, but any attention he had was being splurged on the fact they _were_ kissing and not how they were kissing. It had made him warm to consider, and now it made him hot to experience.

Xehanort caught his lip again, and yeah. That was on purpose. On purpose and seriously unfair, because it made Sora burn up inside. Paired with Xehanort’s hand pawing at the hem of his shirt, Sora was borderline about to combust.

Except Xehanort’s hands were accounted for.

This other hand was small, too. Small and prickly and Sora couldn’t stop himself from breaking away, or keeping down the stupid sound that rose in his throat as Xehanort kissed along it.

He made a second, stupider noise when he saw the claws clutching his shirt, the saucer-huge and yellow eyes staring at him. Sora drew in on himself with a start, the bed shuddering as he smacked against its headboard.

Xehanort blinked at Sora’s sudden recoiling, giving him a curious look before his eyes found the shadow that was now trying to watch both of them at once. His face said he was surprised but did not want to be.

“Aren’t they supposed to listen to you?” Sora asked, shrill and shaken.

“In a general sense, yes.”

For the many things Sora had seen Xehanort do, he had never seen Xehanort rush. Everything he did was intentional and decisive, if not leisurely. It made Sora wonder if Xehanort could be the body snatched one with how fast he stood, arms a blur as he snatched the shadow off the bed.

Before the thought had finished there was a gash of darkness in the room, the overripe scent spilling forth. Sora watched as Xehanort stood before it, the shadow wriggling in his grip. His arm swung back with calculated precision.

When he swung it forward the arc was underhanded. He released his grip as he did so. The shadow did not stop when Xehanort’s arm did, its eyes blurring together as it hit the floor and rolled onward as a living bowling ball into the darkness.

“Xehanort!”

The corridor cleared.

“Coming,” Xehanort said.

Sora got to watch him rush a second time, this time as Xehanort pounced on him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was just a little friend. It didn't deserve that.


	21. Chapter 21

Xehanort had chapped lips and it was Sora’s fault.

He didn’t feel bad about it and Xehanort wasn’t complaining. It had happened on the job, and that job was Sora’s learning how to bite back. It entailed a lot of practice that Xehanort had patiently allowed with minimal teasing and maximum personal demonstrations.

That it took hours to learn didn’t bother Sora.

Then they’d both tasted blood and stopped for the time being. Long enough for Xehanort to suggest food that wasn’t blueberry muffins.

“You’re going to have to hoof it alone,” Sora said. “I’m over shoes for like, forever."

His feet still hurt from the carnival and he wasn’t over the sandal incident.

But then Sora found out that Xehanort had missed his true life calling, which was giving foot rubs. And for better or worse his feet felt decent enough to carry him around in search of food.

It was as they slid into the booth of a kitschy diner that Sora noticed Xehanort’s lips were chapped. He wanted to offer to kiss them better, but something told him that’d make things worse.

Their food did that for them.

“Do you think this is how slugs feel?” Sora asked, licking salt from his lips for the umpteenth time after they’d left the diner.

“Only if slugs eat oversalted fries,” Xehanort said.

He was better about not licking his lips.

“I dunno, if I were a slug I would probably still eat a fry if you gave me one.”

“Then I am glad you are not a slug, but yourself. And that I would not feed a slug such a thing if given the chance.”

Sora snorted, his hip bumping against Xehanort’s as they slowly strolled. His feet were back to hurting, and there was a park bench within eyesight calling his name. Xehanort followed him dutifully, sitting beside him after they reached it.

The sky was darkening but the breeze was warm. Across the path was a row of sleepy sunflowers, their heads bowed as they nodded off. Sora yawned in sympathy.

“For as tall as sunflowers get, you think you’d be able to see them grow,” Sora said.

“Now would be as good a time as any to witness it.”

“Now? At night?” Sora asked, shooting Xehanort a look. “Are you joking?”

“Contemplate it for a moment.”

Sora was more interested in contemplating scooching closer to Xehanort and made as much apparent. Xehanort reflected his interest, the outside of their thighs touching before he spoke again.

“Plants enjoy the darkness, contrary to what you may have been told. Their roots are underground, after all.”

“I guess I never thought about that,” Sora said.

“I doubt many give it much thought. Nevertheless, plants grow their quickest at night.”

Sora hummed and nodded as he took the information in, his hand seeking out Xehanort’s and clasping it gently. He smiled when his yawn caught up to Xehanort.

In the brush around them, night critters stirred. The birdsong was sparse and sweet, the waddle of a distant opossum charming. The world in darkness was different, but not bad.

Above them the stars twinkled. Sora wondered which ones he’d seen before and which were new, viewable exclusively to this place. This he could not have in the daylight.

“Where’s Ophiuchus?” Sora asked, not wholly convinced it existed.

Xehanort pointed to a nondescript grouping.

“There.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Sora’s neck craned as he continued to look, thinking of Riku and his insistence that they leave home.

Sora had been afraid of getting lost with nothing but the vast blue of the sea ahead of them, but Riku explained it would be okay. Sailors before them had sailed by the stars alone. While the sun could guide you as far as you could see, you needed the dark to navigate the unknown.

Riku hadn’t been wrong, but things had still gone wrong.

Sora lowered his gaze in order to rest his head against Xehanort’s arm. Xehanort squeezed his hand in turn, his thumb rubbing over the back of Sora’s knuckles. Worry for the worlds at large ebbed as Sora luxuriated in the simple touch, his thoughts muting until he only noticed a distant scrabbling.

It didn’t stay distant for long.

Sora’s awareness kicked back in as it approached, his eyes darting along the ground to find the source. If the shadow was back, Sora wanted to join the bowling team. He found it as it closed the space between them, smaller and faster than it had been before.

And with little whiskers and paws and beady eyes.

Sora squeaked as he drew his legs up, narrowly avoiding the rat that ran under them. It went on with its life unbothered, charging ahead to whatever local trash can was the hot spot tonight.

“Not a fan of the local fauna?” Xehanort asked.

“I like it plenty,” Sora sniffed. “As long as it’s not trying to steamroll me.”

Xehanort’s brows arched in amusement, but any smart remark he kept to himself in favor of glancing down to where their hands joined. Sora’s was gripping Xehanort’s with a force that made his fingers a bloodless color that didn’t match the rest of him.

Sora unheld Xehanort’s hand.

“In my defense, I thought that heartless was back to spy on us.”

“I wouldn’t suffer an interloper twice,” Xehanort assured Sora.

Sora checked below the bench before lowering his legs. He wasn’t convinced that call was up to Xehanort.

“How did it even get in our room to begin with?” Sora asked.

Xehanort settled an arm over Sora’s shoulders. It wasn’t as light as it usually was. Sora couldn’t tell if it was to comfort or keep him in place.

“That’s a story for another day,” Xehanort said.

 _Comfort,_ Sora decided. Because Xehanort’s weight was heavy but his tone was tender.

“Then what's today's story?” Sora asked.

“We're writing it.”

The easy joy the words gave Sora was instantaneous, his smile deeper than his physical self. The white noise worries of his life lessened as his heart fluttered.

“You make me feel really good without trying,” Sora said.

“I'm trying,” Xehanort said gravely.

Sora smacked Xehanort’s knee.

“Accept the compliment!”

“I’m not declining it. However, I'd like my efforts to be recognized if they're successful.”

Sora cast him a sidelong look.

“And if they’re not?”

“Then they’re not my efforts,” Xehanort said.

Sora snorted.

“Okay, well, your efforts are going great. Keep up the good work.”

Xehanort kissed Sora’s temple, lips curved against his skin.

“I may yet redouble my efforts.”

Sora couldn’t imagine what that would look like, but he’d like it to involve more foot rubs and French fries. And less heartless chaperones.

“How about me?” Sora asked. “What’s my rating?”

Xehanort wasn’t done kissing his temple.

“Oh, beyond words,” he said, breath flickering over Sora’s skin.

Heat crept up Sora’s neck, any response unraveling into a wordless and flustered breath by the time it left his mouth. If Xehanort’s redoubled efforts looked anything like this, they were welcome.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May your holidays be filled with that omnipresent sparkling apple cider and pleasant thoughts of Xehanort and Sora.


	22. Chapter 22

Sora had a simple hair care routine. He washed it with whatever was around and let it dry. If he remembered, he’d comb it.

It had nothing to do with styling and everything to do with staving off tangles that could be conquered by cutting alone.

“Do you think the front desk has scissors?” Sora asked Xehanort.

“What for?”

Sora ran his hand through the hair at the nape of his neck. They stopped at a snarl.

“I forgot to comb my hair.”

_For a while._

Xehanort’s lips thinned as he stared at an unknowable space. Sora tried to look at it too.

“I have to cut it—"

“I know what you want them for,” Xehanort said curtly.

His eyes closed as his hand raised, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. He went waxen. It made Sora think of the figures in the tunnel of love. It wasn’t the healthiest look on a human.

“We are not asking the front desk for scissors.”

“You have some? Awesome,” Sora said.

“There will be no impromptu hair cutting,” Xehanort groaned.

“I don’t know if I’d call it that. I do it all the time.”

Xehanort shuddered and shut his eyes tighter. He was waxier than the statues now. Clammy-looking, too.

“I implore that you wash your hair with my shampoo and conditioner,” Xehanort said. “I will handle whatever problem you have after that.”

“That’s nice of you. I like the bar soap just fine though.”

Xehanort’s eyes opened. His glare was intensely penetrating, his nausea spearing through Sora.

“Right, your stuff,” Sora said, cowing under Xehanort’s gaze. “I’ll get on that.”

* * *

Xehanort’s shampoo and conditioner smelled like special flowers and rich ladies’ skin. Sora slathered it on his scalp and waited the recommended two to three minutes the print instructed him to. When he rinsed it from his hair, the strands were sleeker but the rat’s nest remained.

Plus he found a handful of smaller ones. Mice nests. A second round of washing failed to chase them off and he decided they were Xehanort’s problem now as he turned the taps off.

Sora scrubbed his body dry with a towel, the neckline of his shirt dampening as he pulled it on. He left the bathroom with his towel over his shoulders, ruffling it against his roots to sop up the worst of the water.

“You’ll be bald sooner than I am if you keep that up,” Xehanort said. He stood beside the desk and motioned for Sora to sit.

Sora complied, glancing over the varied array of brushes and combs Xehanort had laid out. They were flanked by sprays and oils with writing too fancy to read.

“Next thing you know you’ll be telling me there’s a right way to dry your hair,” Sora said, examining one of the bottles. It looked like it was for horses.

“There is.”

Xehanort demonstrated before Sora could ask, taking the towel from his shoulders and dabbing at Sora’s hair. It wasn’t as satisfying as the reckless ruffling Sora was used to, but it worked. And it resulted in less static.

Sora smiled and melted into the chair as Xehanort’s fingers carded through his damp hair, drawing it away from his face. The snags were found and spritzed liberally, the smallest of them worked through with a deft touch.

The largest one was not half as amenable.

Sora’s chin tucked easily against his chest when Xehanort tipped his head forward, taking a wide-toothed comb and running it through the tips of the tangle at the nape of Sora’s neck.

“You’re good at hair,” Sora said, even if he was becoming more convinced that was horse spray on the desk.

“We all have our proclivities.”

“So— like, you know what you look like when you get older,” Sora started.

“I’m well aware.”

“What’s the story behind the hair situation there?”

Sora winced as Xehanort yanked the comb through the tangle.

“I’ve never inquired.”

Sora lifted his head in surprise. Xehanort pushed it forward again.

“You’re kidding me!”

“Would it matter?” Xehanort answered.

“I dunno, but I figured you’d want to know what happened. Like if it was on purpose, because it kind of looks on purpose.”

“Why exactly would I want to be bald on purpose?”

“Have you seen your skull?” Sora asked.

“I’d ask that you not antagonize me over it.”

Sora steeled for another yank through his hair, but Xehanort exchanged the comb in hand for one with finer teeth. 

“Not to be a total weirdo, but you have a good—” Sora shaped his hands in the air. “Skull anatomy. It’s got a trustworthy shape.”

Xehanort ran the new comb through Sora’s hair. It didn’t snag.

“I like your unicorn hair plenty,” Sora made sure to add. “All I’m saying is the bald look works for you, too.”

Xehanort combed Sora’s hair in full, the teeth gliding through the length.

“Is this your way of telling me you have a crush on my older self?”

“That’s not the point here!”

Xehanort’s laughter was warm and knowing, and he didn’t press the subject. He replaced the comb on the desk and ran his fingers through Sora’s hair one last time, nails light as they scratched his scalp.

“I’ve finished,” Xehanort declared.

“Are you sure?” Sora asked.

“Unfortunately.”

Sora frowned as he stood, mulling over how quickly he could tangle it again without being too obvious.

“Please come to me prior to encountering any substantial problems,” Xehanort said, eyeing Sora carefully.

Sora rubbed the back of his neck. _Busted._

“How about letting me have a go?” Sora asked.

The light in Xehanort’s eyes turned guarded as he folded his arms over his chest.

“Come on, it’s not like I’m the reason you go bald.”

“An incredibly bold assumption to make, given the number of headaches you’ve created for me,” Xehanort said.

Any bite to the words was curbed as Sora put on his most intensely doe-eyed look.

“I suppose there couldn’t be much harm in a bit of brushing,” Xehanort relented.

His arms dropped to his sides in resignation, Sora’s whoop of delight causing a wince. Sora quieted himself as he gestured grandly for Xehanort to sit before he was rubbing his hands together. So many combs, and so much hair.

Where to begin?

“Start with the ends,” Xehanort instructed, and Sora wasn’t sure if he’d been thinking aloud or if Xehanort just _knew_.

“Please, it’s not like I’ve never brushed hair before,” Sora said. The frequency with which he did it was unimportant.

He reached out for the first comb he saw, the motion hesitant. His hand hovered over it as he thought of Xehanort’s process. There was an order to it all. One that escaped him.

His hand began to move to another comb, hoping to divine which came first. 

Xehanort picked the one Sora had originally gone towards and handed it back to him.

“Go on.”

Sora heeded Xehanort’s guidance, gripping the comb tightly as his other hand took up a lock of hair. The ends of it were fine and smooth and the teeth ran through them with ease.

Xehanort was another story. His shoulders were too stiff, his posture peculiarly straight. Sora combed through the same lock again, slower now. The strands fanned over his palm as they fell, lighter than breath.

When Sora took up a new length of hair, Xehanort managed to find a way to sit so straight he verged on inventing standing.

“Does it hurt?” Sora asked.

“No.”

“Well, stop acting like it hurts! You’re making me nervous.”

Sora listened to Xehanort huff, but he didn’t have anything to add. His shoulders dropped by an imperceptible margin. Sora prodded them with the comb.

“Now who needs to learn to drop their shoulders?” he asked.

That did the trick. Sora bent to give each side a kiss in thanks and returned to brushing. It came more naturally to him without Xehanort making it an exercise of immense endurance.

“I may not look it, but I can do more than brush,” Sora said. “Like ponytails. And braiding.”

Sora put the handle of the comb between his teeth and ran his hands through Xehanort’s hair, pulling it back into a ponytail to give a sampling of his expertise. It would have turned out better if Xehanort’s head hadn’t moved with Sora’s hands.

The sigh that left Xehanort was sweet-tempered.

Sora smiled and ran his hands through Xehanort’s hair a second time. Xehanort followed his touch again, leaning into it like a cat in search of head rubs. Sora provided them until he worried Xehanort was going to pull something in his neck with how he was leaning.

“Any requests?” Sora asked, letting go to take the comb out of his teeth.

Xehanort gave the jerk of someone deeply unaware of their surroundings.

“Hm?”

“How about a nice French braid?” Sora suggested.

Xehanort cleared his throat and sat up in his seat, having switched to nearly inventing lying down.

“You can French braid?” he asked.

His tone was somewhere between incredulous and impressed.

“I'm not fluent, but I can get by.”

Riku had been good practice. And a good sport.

Xehanort slid an elastic from his wrist and gave it to Sora. It ended up where the comb had been between Sora’s teeth, his hands gathering Xehanort’s hair up and sectioning it off. There was a grip to the strands, a tack from whatever Xehanort had run through it already. It smelled expensive and smoky.

Sora set to crossing the strands over one another, fingers curled and careful as he shifted the hair. He tried not to look at what he was doing or think about it, because that was the best way to braid. The second he got to calculating section lengths or what he’d last moved, his French braid became a French breakdown.

It was hard to shut off his brain, though.

He wanted to look and think as much as possible. To commit this quiet moment to his mind, all distractions fading away while his fingers stuttered and struggled as he added new sections to the braid.

Halfway through it was simultaneously chunky and thin. There were five strands and none of them were working as a team. Sora tried to fix it. He was left with seven strands and a style that made Xehanort’s hair look… ungood.

“I need a do-over,” Sora said around the elastic, letting go of the thing that was supposed to be a braid and combing his fingers through it.

His second attempt was fraught with more staring. He avoided doing it at his fingers, focusing on the hair itself. It was a pretty mother of pearl gray, reflecting the light of the room in impossible ways. Forget the foot rubs, maybe Xehanort’s life calling was being a shampoo model.

At the same time, Sora was finding out braiding was the opposite of his life calling. His anti-career.

The motions of his hands slowed with each crossed strand, worsening even as he refused to look at them. He did all he could to turn his brain off, to blank out and autopilot his way through the process. 

When his resolve shook and he glanced at the braid, his vision unfocused as his eyes moved. They settled and sharpened, but it took too long. There was a delay between the thought of stopping his hands and their completing the action.

It wasn’t that he was slow, it was that there was no quickness to be had. The soundless noise was back and time was congealing. It was worse than running in a dream.

In a dream, he was thinking and acting in tandem. Time existed between thought and action, but it was infinitesimally small and beyond to notice. 

This was different.

He was experiencing the time it took to think.

The time it took to think, to send, to react. The interim was no longer instantaneous and it was terrible because there was nothing in its place. No thought left in his head, no action at hand. There was a purgatory between the former becoming the latter and it was where Sora stopped living and started existing.

Time compressed back to correctness.

Every thought Sora had reached the rest of him in a jumbled rush.

His body acted on them all before he could send one saying to do none of them. It landed him on the floor, the ceiling above him spinning wildly as his body jerked and twitched with leftover reactions until he was able to roll onto his side and right himself.

Sora sucked in a deep and startled breath as he got to his feet, the normalized flow of time rushing by. His muscles were tense with the belated urge to escape, his eyes darting to the door to reassure his animal instinct that it was possible.

Xehanort stood between him and it.

There was a tension in him as well, a slope to his shoulders and a rigid bend to his fingers that made them look... grabby? Not grabbing, but ready to. Sora got the sense that if he made any sudden moves he’d get to see a suddener move from Xehanort.

The concept didn’t appeal to him and the nervous weakness in his limbs said fancy footwork was off the menu anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Xehanort would have a fling with Mane 'n Tail products and I cannot judge him for it. But I will judge him for being naughty.


	23. Chapter 23

Sora took another, quieter breath. There was no hair elastic between his teeth now and he hoped that didn’t mean it was in his stomach. He had bigger problems to worry about, like how he was going to be cool about this.

_Be the bigger person._

He started by raising his hands, palms outward and open. No hard feelings here.

“Whatever it is you think I’m going to do, I’m not,” Sora said. “So whatever it is I think you’re going to do… don’t?”

Xehanort looked Sora over in search of a tell, a giveaway that Sora wasn’t going to let go that easy. But Sora didn’t have any because he meant what he said. He kept his hands where they were, heartbeat rabbit-fast as he processed possible outcomes to this.

“Alright,” Xehanort agreed.

He recomposed himself in a process that involved taking a step nearer to Sora. All of Sora shied except his feet. Those had the unfortunate distinction of being rooted in place.

Xehanort was back to looking him over.

The one-off had become a two-off, and there had to be a way understandable and reasonable explanation here. Sora would find it out once he worked up to asking. Or detectiving. Who said they had to talk about this? They hadn’t back at the carnival.

For all Sora knew, Xehanort wasn’t aware of what he’d done then. Or now. Why else would he be so casual and unapologetic about it? Sora could sympathize.

He himself had a case of Oopsy Fire disease, which was responsible for a lot of oopsies where he’d lit things on fire without thinking. Sora was no doctor, but Xehanort could have Oopsy Time disease.

Xehanort’s other primary medical diagnosis was Shit Word Choice disease.

“You reacted exceptionally poorly to that,” Xehanort said. The fact it didn’t sound like an insult made it worse.

Sora balked.

“Are you being for real with me right now?”

Xehanort frowned.

“Did you enjoy it?”

Sora didn’t have any tells before because he fully planned to let it go. But that was him twenty seconds ago. Him, right now, was not as motivated to be a bigger person. Really, if he thought about it, Xehanort was literally the bigger person. That was his job. God had given it to him.

“No, I did not enjoy it,” Sora said. “What is your major malfunction?”

A crease appeared between Xehanort’s eyebrows.

“You know what? I don’t want to hear about it right now,” Sora said. “I’m going to finish braiding your hair, because I said I would. And if I wait another minute I’m going to yank it out instead.”

Xehanort wavered.

Sora grabbed at him, all fury and kept promises as Xehanort was wrestled into his seat. His hands gripped the armrests like a prisoner trapped in an electric chair. Sora put his hands on his hips as he saw the elastic back on the desk. Slightly slobbered on, but no worse for wear.

Jeez. The priorities on this guy.

Xehanort flinched under Sora’s hands as they touched his head. The fury in Sora sputtered and he gentled his touch.

“I’m not actually going to yank your hair,” Sora grumbled.

“Forgive me for believing otherwise.”

The armrests creaked.

Sora took the elastic from the desk, set on finishing the job. His thoughts hovered around his frustrations and his eyes glazed over as he worked.

He paid half the attention needed on this attempt, fingers hooking and weaving with motions half-learned and wholly unpolished. He secured the end with an amateur twist of the elastic before standing back to look at the results.

The strands were chunky and inconsistent. It could have been better, but so could the person he did it for.

That made it perfect.

“All done,” Sora said.

Xehanort reached back with his hand and pet it over the braid. His fingers lingered on the errant tufts and loose strands, but he didn’t comment on them. Sora’s fury continued to fizzle.

“You can take a free shot at me,” Xehanort said as he stood.

Sora blinked.

“We’d be even then,” Xehanort clarified.

Sora’s breath left him in a frustrated snort, eyes downcast as he padded towards the bed. He sat on the edge, hands rubbing at his knees as he shook his head.

“I don’t want to get even,” Sora said. “I want you to just—"

Sora hesitated.

_Explain yourself. Say sorry. Not do it again._

It felt like a lot to ask for, given Xehanort’s nonchalance. It wasn’t a big deal to him. Why did it have to be a big deal to Sora?

“You used magic on me,” Sora said. “Why would you do that?”

Xehanort came to stand in front of Sora. He did not sit on the bed. With his head bowed, Sora could feel Xehanort looking down on him, imperious and placid.

“I wanted to prolong the moment.”

Sora tried to rub his kneecaps off. The explanation didn’t satisfy him.

“You seriously did that on purpose?” Sora asked, keeping his head down.

He was ready to let this go now. Not because he had answers, but because he didn’t want them anymore.

“The act was intentional.”

Xehanort had such a blasé way of saying it that Sora’s head snapped up. Xehanort’s eyes were bright and watchful, his hands clasped behind his back. There was no apology on his lips. No mention of remorse.

He didn’t get it, did he?

Sora’s voice softened when he spoke.

“You can’t do that, alright? I get wanting to stay like this for ages. I more than get it. That doesn’t mean you can cast magic on people all willy-nilly, especially without asking—"

“Sora, that’s enough,” Xehanort interrupted.

Now he looked sorry, but not for himself. 

“I am not infantile in my behaviors.”

“I’m not calling you a baby,” Sora said quickly.

“But you are assigning me the interpersonal awareness of one,” Xehanort said. His words were clipped around the edges with frustration. “You may find what I do uncouth, but my actions are not performed without forethought.”

Sora couldn’t feel his knees anymore.

“Then why did you do that?” Sora asked.

“The urge arose naturally to myself and I found it worthwhile to act upon.”

Sora’s heart gave a sick squeeze. He tried not to let the words settle into his head, reminding himself of the other things that came naturally to Xehanort. Like being polite and kind and making Sora feel good.

Sora took to looking at Xehanort’s knees. He was the childish one now. Had been the childish one from the beginning. Telling himself all the while that Xehanort needed to learn, needed to be explained to. As if Xehanort didn’t get it already.

This was what Sora had originally sought. The mess that Xehanort was, still human in his mistakes, and the person he was reformable. Now it scared Sora to confront it. He would have cried if he’d had room on his overloaded plate to do so.

Xehanort’s hand came to rest on the back of Sora’s head, his palm stroking the hair towards the nape. His touch held the same kind of sorry as his face had. Sorry for Sora. Stupid, naive Sora.

“I will say it was not my intention to upset you.”

Sora wasn’t aware of responding, but Xehanort went on like he did.

“After our time at the carnival, I thought you were comfortable with it. But even if you were— I went overboard this time, and in that regard I apologize.”

The tips of his nails skimmed Sora’s neck and made the skin beneath prickle.

Sora’s shoulders rose and fell with a shaky breath. There was the apology, but it didn’t make him feel any better. It needled at Sora, pointed out where the action had been acceptable.

How shallow, to be bothered by Xehanort’s desire to take a tender moment and make it last. How shallow, to be bothered more by that than the involvement of the innocent, able to overlook it where it had benefited him.

Sora penciled in time to practice the mental gymnastics he’d need to do to feel okay about that later.

Xehanort’s hand stopped its petting, the mattress dipping as he sat beside Sora. Sora kept looking at Xehanort’s knees while waiting for the feeling to return to his own. Xehanort raised one over the other, legs delicately crossing as his palms rested on the mattress.

“You are uniquely capable of seeing goodness in others,” Xehanort said to the ceiling. “But at times it misleads you into seeing goodness where none exists.”

Sora resisted the urge to smack Xehanort’s knee.

“Read the room a little, I’m not here for my quarterly review,” Sora said. “Not to mention, isn’t that a good thing for you?”

“While of benefit to me in the short term, you know I operate with regards to the larger picture.”

“Okay,” Sora said flatly.

He couldn’t tell where this conversation was going and he didn’t like that.

“I’d like you to try seeing me for who I am.”

 _I’m seeing, alright,_ Sora thought. He was having to take a look at himself, too.

There’d been a flare of wrongness when Xehanort said he found goodness where there was none. The observation fit wrong in Sora’s heart, that part of him already figured out. Sora didn’t mistake things for good, he decided they were.

He saw the ugly in people and found a million ways why it wasn’t bad. He offered excuses, gave people outs. The infinite forgiveness in his heart was real, but not entirely altruistic.

It was easier to accept a misunderstanding than it was to accept bad intentions.

“Just… don’t do that sort of thing without asking,” Sora said, lifting his head.

Xehanort’s eyebrow quirked.

“I can refrain from doing it entirely,” he offered. “Outside of extenuating circumstances.”

 _Of battle,_ went unspoken. 

“Nah, don’t worry about it.” _There he went._ “What if I’m going to eat dirt? Or smack my head on something?”

“And you expect me to be able to inquire as to whether or not you’d like me to stop that?”

“I guess that’d be a pretty short window,” Sora admitted. “How about this, use your best judgement.”

Xehanort agreed with a cant of his head, but his expression was quiet and his eyes were dark. It was the look Sora had seen on his face when they first spent time together. The look he’d never seen before that made him burn to befriend Xehanort. 

Had Sora been the cause back then? And what had spurred its return?

Sora mustered a smile he didn’t feel and put his hand on Xehanort’s knee, injecting what levity he could into his voice to diffuse the dour atmosphere.

“Don’t go thinking this means you’re off the hook.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes people are complicated. (Next week will be a much fluffier chapter.)


	24. Chapter 24

“You know this is supposed to be a punishment, right?” Sora asked.

Xehanort looked up from where he knelt on the floor. Sora’s foot was in his hands being kneaded into oblivion.

“I gathered as much.”

“Then at least look like you’re not having a good time.”

He poked Xehanort in the chest with his other foot to make his point. Xehanort lowered his gaze and his expression dropped with it. He hadn’t looked ecstatic before, but there’d been an upturn to his lips that suggested he wasn’t having a bad time.

Now it was gone, his features smoothed over by the ennui that came from toiling without a goal in sight. With his eyes shaded, the gold of them became tarnished and cheap.

“You’re hamming it up too much,” Sora said with another poke.

Xehanort frowned.

“That’s my natural expression.”

“Oops.”

Sora stopped his poking and tried to not focus on Xehanort’s face. He may not have been trying to ham up that sad look, but he was hamming up his handsomeness. What, with the way the hair that escaped Sora’s poor braid hung forward in delicate strands, and his hands looking particularly piano-y. Then he had the nerve to bat his lashes at Sora, but that could have been how he normally blinked.

It wasn’t going to get him out of this situation. Foot rubs were the second leg of Xehanort’s restitution, the first having been to kiss and make up. It wasn’t a demand, but an offer. One put forth by Sora and gladly taken up by Xehanort.

Xehanort kissed him with such gentle passion that Sora’s murmurs of introspective anxiety had melted away. He let his worries be swept up in a swoon, sure that no one that made him feel this good could be bad.

Sora didn’t remember dictating the foot rub next, but it was happening and it must have been his idea, because it was a really good idea. The only other idea he had was for Xehanort to feed him grapes on the couch like an ancient and all-powerful emperor.

The couch they had, the grapes they didn’t.

* * *

“I want to do this again,” Sora decided.

“I’ve yet to finish,” Xehanort said. “It’s a bit early to ask me to begin anew.”

“No, not this. I mean, yes this. But like, all of this.” Sora gestured to the room around them. “This friendcation thing.”

The corners of Xehanort’s eyes creased as they shut, a good-humored snort leaving him.

“Friendcation? Is that what you’ve named this?”

Sora nodded.

“What else would I call it? Hanging out on the boardwalk, going to the carnival, getting tattoos—"

Sora paused, lips pursing. They’d never done their tattoos, not after Xehanort had been a spoilsport over Sora’s pick.

“I will call it whatever you decree, as long as we do it again.”

“Oh, phew,” Sora said, lips relaxing. “I thought you didn’t want to do the tattoo thing after all.”

Xehanort’s hands froze.

“We don’t need to do everything on this stay,” he said. “We should leave something to look forward to the next time.”

“A likely story,” Sora said.

He didn’t trust himself not to accidentally lose them until then, or for Xehanort not to accidentally lose them on purpose. What he did trust was that Xehanort would like his pick, actually, should he see Sora’s concept executed.

“I sure would feel better about a certain someone using magic on me if that certain someone had faith in my artistic abilities.”

Xehanort did not give in.

“Someone who didn’t even say they were going to do it. Can you believe that?”

“I’ve long thought your announcements of magic were to your disadvantage,” Xehanort said beneath his breath. 

“Do I hear barking from the doghouse?” Sora asked, craning his neck to look around the room.

Xehanort picked no further bone.

* * *

Getting a temporary tattoo hurt more than Sora expected.

“Would it kill you to use cooler water?” Sora asked, cringing when Xehanort laid a dampened washcloth over his skin.

The instructions had called for it to be lukewarm. If the heated bite of the water Xehanort used was his understanding of that, it was a miracle he had any skin left after a shower. Maybe that was how he ended up bald, his hair melted off via scalding.

“You’ll live,” Xehanort said, looking down at Sora.

His bedside manner was terrible.

“Were you supposed to count the seconds, or was I?” Sora asked, thinking back to the instructions.

“I know how long it’s been.”

The discomfort lessened as the cloth began to cool, Xehanort’s hand keeping it pressed to Sora’s bicep. The bed was their makeshift operating table, and Sora lay there as he stared up at Xehanort’s jawline.

It moved as he silently mouthed a word. Sora couldn’t lip read.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Counting Mississippis,” Xehanort said.

“What’s a ‘Mississippi’?”

Xehanort lifted the cloth from Sora’s arm, then lifted the backing of the tattoo away. He gave it an appraising look before nodding at no one.

“You’re done.”

Sora sat up and slid off the bed, padding off to the bathroom to check his tattoo. He watched his reflection lift an arm and flex. The freshly-applied dragon twitched. Sora flexed harder.

“How do you like it?” Xehanort asked from the other room.

“I like it a lot. When I flex, it’s like it dances.” Near imperceptible dancing was still dancing. “If I dance, do you think it’ll flex?”

Xehanort gave no answer, and Sora was dissatisfied with the one he got when he put his question to the test. Bummer.

Xehanort’s entire aura was a bummer when Sora returned. He brought a fresh washcloth with him, rung out and lukewarm. Actual lukewarm. Xehanort didn’t lay on the operating table, but that was fine. This was a minor procedure, he could be sitting for it.

“Hand,” Sora commanded as he settled himself next to Xehanort.

Xehanort offered his palm. Sora set the washcloth on his lap and flipped Xehanort’s hand so that the back of it was facing him. There was a faint and fetching map of veins. Sora brought Xehanort’s hand to his lips and kissed it. It marked the spot where he intended to put Xehanort’s tattoo.

Sora peeled the clear film from the tattoo and positioned it carefully, and when it was centered and flush he applied the cloth. Sora still didn’t know what a Mississippi was but he counted them anyway as Xehanort had.

He finished thirty of them and lifted the cloth and tattoo backing away.

“Wow,” Sora said, reading the tattoo.

The word sat on a red and stemless spade, its point directed at Xehanort.

“This is your vision?” Xehanort asked flatly.

“Yep. Subversive, right? Or am I thinking transgressive?”

“You’ve absolutely transgressed,” Xehanort muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Gee, how about a little appreciation for the artist?” Sora asked.

“Come closer, Sora,” Xehanort said.

His voice was not appreciative, and Sora scooted back a few inches.

“Come closer.”

That was the opposite of appreciative. Depreciative? Sora added more inches.

“ _Sora._ ”

Xehanort subtracted inches faster than Sora could add them, lunging forward with his arms outstretched. They wrapped around Sora and squeezed a yelp from him as they attempted to tame his subsequent wriggling.

Sora wriggled more. All those muscles were there, flexing and strong and snug against him. They shifted when Sora did and he moved not to escape them, but get closer.

If Xehanort couldn’t appreciate his masterpiece, then so be it. It was a small price to pay for a ticket to muscle heaven. If Sora played his cards right, he might have a chance at visiting titty heaven, too.

He ended up in lap heaven, which was hitherto unknown and exciting enough to quell his movements.

It was soft and lovely and Xehanort settled him there with minimal resistance as Sora marveled at his luck.

“I take it you’ve seen the light?” Sora asked, leaning his back against Xehanort’s chest. There were no rules against experiencing more than one heaven at once.

An arm slid around the front of Sora’s waist, anchoring him in place as Xehanort’s chin rested on his shoulder. 

“I again request that you see me as I am— or perhaps, see me as I do,” Xehanort said.

His breath tickled the shell of Sora’s ear.

It made him giddy with where he’d ended up. Physically, mentally. In life. Sat in the lap of his own enemy, now friend, whose other hand smoothed down his thigh and came to a stop above his knee.

Sora tried to will it to go back up to his thigh. He stared at it, and stared at the tattoo. He saw it as Xehanort did, a heart against his skin and the word it contained bold and loud.

_MOM._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You didn't think I forgot about their tattoos, did you?
> 
> With the amount of traveling Xehanort has done, it is entirely reasonable that he has been to Mississippi at least once.


	25. Chapter 25

Xehanort’s tattoo was extraordinarily temporary, but the mark it left behind was not. Sora caught a glimpse of what remained after overzealous rounds of scrubbing, tacky scraps of the peeling heart, the words gone and the skin beneath raw.

It was hidden away under gloves when they went out. Piano hands locked away under a piano keylid. Not to touch unless you know how to play, and Sora had played all wrong.

“It made sense in my head,” he explained as they left the motel. “It’s not like I didn’t know what it said to begin with.”

“I believe you,” Xehanort said.

His voice was light with distraction while his hands patted down his pockets. The weather out was muggy, the summer humidity strong and the clouds an expansive gray. Sora stood by and played with the limp bow with which he’d knotted his shawl.

Sora didn’t want to risk his own tattoo getting wet and the mustard of the shawl matched the mustard of his heavy earrings. They swung to and fro as a gust that carried no gull cry kicked up.

“Do you think it’ll storm?” Sora asked.

“As we have no umbrellas, yes.”

Sora stuck out his tongue and began to walk, the street sparsely populated as they set off. The air would do them both well, Xehanort had said. That was prior to finding out the air was sweatier than they were, but by then Sora had his lip gloss on and what was the point of that if no one got to see it?

Another gust of wind made him regret his choice as a bit of hair stuck to his lips.

“This way.”

The leather of Xehanort’s gloves was at his wrist as the words were spoken, his fingers circling loosely. His pressure was an invitation to follow, and Sora did. It led him away from the path his feet had chosen. The one that would take them toward the shoreline they’d strolled before.

“Is there a secret beach?” Sora asked.

“Don’t you think we’ve had enough of the beach recently?” Xehanort answered.

Sora looked over his shoulder. The clouds were heavier over the water, their gray an inky stain. With the darkness on the horizon and the wind around them, a shiver snuck through Sora.

What was deja vu when you knew its root?

A far-off memory that was like a scattered dream.

“Enough beach,” Sora agreed. His teeth chattered for a brief moment and then he was hurrying away from the scene.

* * *

The charm of the boardwalk dwindled as they distanced themselves from it, the colorful shops and set ups muting into dull sidewalks and stony storefronts. Weeds grew from the cracks, and sometimes from nothing at all. 

Heavy clouds cast early shadows along their path, dark forms stretching from mail boxes and fences, one attached to every car that rumbled by them. Sora studied them with fleeting intensity, deciding if they were shadows or _shadows_ before moving to the next.

“You appear particularly thoughtful,” Xehanort said after they’d crossed enough blocks for the seaside lap of waves to grow too distant to hear.

Sora looked up from a suspiciously-shaped dark mark on the ground.

“I still don’t get where that heartless came from,” Sora said.

“That was rather a surprise,” Xehanort agreed.

Xehanort didn’t look at the mark, or any other mark for that matter. He kept his eyes ahead, steps swifter than before. Sora lengthened his stride to an unnatural one to keep up.

“You know why it was there,” Sora said.

He glanced to the side as he stated it. Xehanort’s gaze remained intentionally forward. He didn’t deny it. 

“So what’s the story with that?” Sora asked.

They came to a stop at an intersection, their signal bright orange and halting. Sora prodded the crossing button with his elbow. It beeped at him.

“It slipped in unawares to me,” Xehanort said.

“Can you not give me the run around with this? I get that you didn’t invite it,” Sora said, keeping his voice mild.

He didn’t want a fight, he wanted an explanation. The lack of Xehanort’s usual keen interest in giving one set him on edge. His nervous energy manifested in a continued jamming of his elbow against the crossing button as they waited for the light to change.

Xehanort took Sora’s elbow and gently lowered it.

“It followed me after I had attended to personal business,” Xehanort began as their signal to cross lit up.

“Personal business?”

“Yes, business of a personal degree.”

Sora grumbled in the back of his throat.

“I will tell you the details when we are not in the middle of the road.”

Xehanort’s hand stayed at Sora’s elbow, leading him on until they’d reached the other side. The sidewalk turned to cobblestone, the area in front of them a town square.

In its center was a fountain of fantastic size, but the only thing that flowed from its tiers were more weeds.

“The photos online were romantic,” Xehanort said, words riding on a crestfallen breath.

“Um, I’m sure it’s still plenty nice,” Sora said, approaching the fountain with Xehanort in tow.

Its basin collected not water, but wrappers. What color they should have provided had been bleached away by the sun.

“This is probably the off season,” Sora added, giving the area a once over.

The lampposts that lined the square were an oxidized copper. The banners hanging from them advertised events that had passed and their bases were dappled with wads of gum. He felt sticky looking at them. The most exciting thing in sight was a convenience store.

“I bet it’s romantic to someone,” Sora decided, seeing that Xehanort had taken on a baleful look.

“I’d be fortunate to never meet them,” Xehanort said.

His hands were in his pockets and Sora watched them flex. He thought about the mark left behind, now hidden deeply. Sora didn’t know how breathable leather gloves were, but he figured they must be miserable in this swamp weather.

“Sorry about that again,” Sora said.

“Hm?”

Xehanort pulled his hands out. One remained in a closed fist.

“For the record, I don’t think you have to wear your gloves to cover the mark. You’re gonna draw attention that way.”

“Oh, is that what you’re speaking on?” Xehanort asked. “I hardly think anyone would notice, but they would notice my atrocious nails.”

“You’re worried about your nails right now?” Sora said incredulously. “I thought you were mad about your tattoo!”

“I can worry over a great many things,” Xehanort said. “But a tattoo I no longer have is not one of them.”

Sora folded his arms over his chest as he thought of all the energy he’d wasted on imagining Xehanort’s irritation. He could have wasted it on other things. Like how that shadow had found its way into the motel room.

“Hey, you owe me an explanation still!”

Xehanort’s expression drew together into something subtle and sly, like he was proud of whatever he was doing despite being caught.

“And here I thought I’d distracted you.”

Goosebumps prickled along Sora’s forearms, the hair standing on end in their wake as Xehanort closed the space between them. Was that voice fun and flirty, or fiendish? It tended to run together when Xehanort was involved.

His hand still being closed put a point under fiendish. Sora’s pulse quickened as his feet rooted to the spot, suspicious of what was hidden from him. He watched as Xehanort brought his hand up, fingers unfurling to show what he’d taken from his pocket.

On his palm lay something old and something new.

The shells of Sora’s necklace were there. Not all of them, but enough to make a bracelet. The sparse spots were padded with color, a showcase of the worn sea glass Sora had watched Xehanort eagerly collect. The clasp was stylish and sturdy.

"You made this," Sora said, somewhere between a question and disbelief.

His dream surged to the forefront of his mind. Xehanort in his cloak and the purr of his self-assured voice that arose when he was plotting. The napkin of all things, fresh in Sora’s memories from the evening of their fight. Able to hold dozens of shell shards plucked from the sand during Sora’s head start.

“You made this last night!”

“Yes, though you nearly spoiled yourself for it,” Xehanort said. “I thought you were sleeping when I was preparing to leave.”

“I thought I was sleeping, too,” Sora admitted.

He held his wrist out unprompted, smiling as Xehanort looped the bracelet next to the battered carnival wristband that Sora had yet to take off. The bracelet fastened with a secure click and Sora turned his arm this way and that as he admired the gift.

The shells didn’t shine, the sunlight too little to allow it. He thought of how far they’d come with him, the last souvenir of another life. One that had ended with a storm at the shore and a darkness that hadn’t stayed distant.

A rumble of thunder from lightning Sora had missed snapped him back, the sound a bellow that rose above the wind. An instinctual part of him trembled once he saw the inky clouds had begun to reach inland.

“Sora?”

Sora started as he was reminded he wasn’t alone. The pride that had been on Xehanort’s face muted, a furrow appearing between his brows.

“Sorry, I’m fine. I was just thinking,” Sora said. He gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I’m sure you’re tired of me doing that.”

The furrow deepened.

“Seriously, I wasn’t doing anything beyond the usual homesick moping. S’nothing that’s your fault.”

Sora revived his smile with effort and returned to looking at his bracelet. He tried to beam his appreciation at Xehanort, and his apologies.

_I like this. I like this and I’m sorry I’m like this._

“It is my fault.”

Sora would have thought he’d imagined the words if he hadn’t seen Xehanort’s lips move out of the corner of his eye. Sora saw the next flash of lightning and shuddered with the thunder.

There was that expression again, the one only Sora could bring out. That maudlin frown, that faraway sorry, that indefinable extra.

It was shame.

“Don’t say that,” Sora said, taking Xehanort’s hands.

Xehanort hung his head in a way that made him look small even while Sora’s neck craned to look him in the eye. Small and shrinking away.

“When will you see it?”

The furrow between his brows had dispersed into fine lines across his face, the kind that preceded a crumpling of emotion and expression. Sora’s grip went rigid at the sight, his heart squirming up his throat.

Was Xehanort going to cry?

But it was rain that fell first, a fat droplet splashing against Sora’s cheek. He squeezed Xehnort’s hands until it must have been painful for them both.

“I’m going to grab us some umbrellas, alright?” he said. “You stay here.”

_Stay here and don’t think about what you’ve done._

Sora stood on tiptoe to leave with a fleeting kiss, halfway across the plaza before he glanced over his shoulder. Xehanort remained where Sora put him, hangdog and silent. Sora frowned and jogged onward to the convenience store.

He had his own rising tide of shame to handle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't fall prey to overpriced Walgreens umbrellas, Sora.


	26. Chapter 26

“Do you need help?”

Sora looked at the voice. Someone in an orderly vest and pressed pants stood next to him. He read their name tag without taking it in.

“No,” Sora said.

He was perfectly unhappy to continue debating if he wanted to buy the duck umbrella with the reddish yellow beak or the duck umbrella with the yellowish red beak. But he didn’t like being stared at so he put them both in his basket and hurried off for non-necessity-necessities.

Sora thought of himself as a good friend. He listened and loved and did what he could. And if he couldn’t do anything, he left.

It was impossible to be a bad friend if he wasn’t there. Impossible to say the wrong words, to give the wrong advice.

Impossible to say he’d made anyone cry.

Sora threw nail polish remover in his basket, like a good friend. Because Xehanort was insecure about his nails and Sora could solve that. That Xehanort was more insecure about his actions— past and present and who knew how far into the future— wasn’t something the convenience store sold a remedy for.

There were three rows of red nail polish and Sora didn’t see a difference between any of them.

_When will you see it?_

The words played in his head. It was a ridiculous question, because Sora did see it.

Like gravity, like the speed of sound, it was an invisible truth he knew.

But he didn’t believe it.

Xehanort to Ansem, Ansem to Riku. A spidery web of a deeply premeditated path that Sora had gotten a firsthand explanation of not long ago. It should have stirred something in Sora to recall it. Indignation, resentment, a self righteous anger. A guilt over not having done enough.

And he did feel guilt, but it stemmed like the weeds as it grew from nothingness.

Sora put Fire Engine Foxy in his basket because it shone the most brightly in its bottle. He looked for a matching lipstick next. It gave him time to think about what he was going to say.

_I know I ditched you when you probably needed me, but no hard feelings I hope. Kind of like no hard feelings over you obliterating our home._

No, too casual. Too fucked up.

At least Xehanort got that his whole deal was fucked up. That was a breakthrough. Sure, it sucked he had to do it now. Still better late than never. And better to realize that he felt bad instead of realize Sora didn’t feel that bad.

But what Sora did feel bad about was standing here, deciding between satin and demi-matte and mousse lipstick while Xehanort hung around outside like a sorry stray.

Sora wasn’t being a bad friend. He was being an awful friend.

Sora picked a lipstick with a painful price point and made for the checkout. He added conciliatory snacks while he waited in line and grabbed a bottle of Happy Water from a mini fridge. He’d paid and had one foot out the door when he realized that was a brand and not a promise.

His other foot didn’t follow when he found the square empty. It was a shade darker than when he’d left, the pavement wetted as rain pattered against it. The sliding doors whirred as they began to close on him.

A hand at his arm coaxed him out of their path. Sora’s purchases clattered in his bag as he jumped at the touch, looking sharply to the side to find Xehanort standing beneath the awning of the store. He had less lines than when Sora had last seen him and new frizzy flyaways.

“There you are,” Sora said, a hand settling on his chest to quiet the startled skip of his heart. “Uh, and here I am. Back. I got things.”

His bag crinkled as he rested it in the crook of his elbow and rooted through it. He fished an umbrella out, tearing at the tag and fumbling with the button on the handle. His heart was sent skipping again as the stem shot up and the canopy opened.

Its metal ribs were rattled by the wind as Sora held it aloft, arm awkwardly overextended to shelter them both.

“I didn’t mean to bail on you like that,” Sora confessed, looking up into Xehanort’s face. He looked tired in a way sleep could not solve. “I was afraid of saying the wrong thing.”

“If there was a right thing to say, I wouldn’t know it,” Xehanort said. His touch was gentle as he slid the umbrella from Sora’s grip and shifted it to his own. He held it above them with ease as they began to walk.

“But that’s the thing, I should be able to figure it out!”

“Why is that?”

“Because I’m a good friend,” Sora said, although it sounded like an insistence. “And good friends always know just what to say.”

Xehanort pressed the crossing button before Sora could. He spun the handle of the umbrella once as they waited, thoughtful as Sora glanced to him.

“I would think a good friend can admit at times they are at a loss for words.”

Sora bumped against Xehanort as he stepped over a fresh puddle, the splatter of rain wetting his shoes.

“Okay, okay,” Sora said. “But I want to be better than that— like, a perfect friend.”

“How dreadful.”

Sora would have stopped in his tracks for dramatic effect if that hadn’t meant a free shower.

“What’s so bad about wanting to be a perfect friend, huh?”

“Why, you tell me,” Xehanort said.

He tipped the umbrella away with suspicious precision, sending Sora huddling closer to stay dry.

“Well, everyone would want to be my friend then,” Sora said.

“Do they not already?”

Sora rubbed his chin and squinted at the blocks beyond.

“I hope so?”

“I daresay the people in your life love you for who you are, imperfections included.”

“You think?” Sora asked.

“Perhaps all the more for them.”

Xehanort said it in a voice that was happy and sad and altogether unnerving.

* * *

The sadness lingered in Xehanort’s voice when they returned to their room.

He had some sort of problem, a problem bigger than Sora could figure out. And he could ask, but that was its own problem. For all the underhanded tactics Xehanort indulged in, lying was not one of them.

Sora liked that a lot about him.

For the most part.

Sora toyed with the bracelet at his wrist, ran his fingers over the frosted smoothness of sea glass and the nipping edge of shells. Imperfection came without intention. Whatever Sora was doing now, this song and dance around an unspoken issue, was practiced and purposeful.

“Did you want to talk about earlier?” Sora asked, coming up behind Xehanort where he sat at the room’s desk.

His nails were half bare, half red. The polish was neat and smooth and stayed everywhere it should have. He didn’t turn to look at Sora when he spoke.

“Regrettably.”

Sora’s stomach gave a cold twist. Xehanort had a thing for dramatic flair, but this wasn’t it. His voice was horribly calm and steady, like he’d gone over this in his head a billion times.

“Floor’s all yours,” Sora prompted.

“I apologize to you.”

Sora’s lips thinned, braced for whatever followed. Okay, Xehanort was sorry. About what? He kind of had a ton of things to be sorry for. Or maybe he had new things. Whatever he’d done, there had to be a reason. Once Xehanort explained himself, it’d make sense. It’d be alright.

Sora reined the thought in, gritting his teeth as he recognized it for what it was. More excuses, more made up goodness. He needed to listen. Listen, and see Xehanort for who he was.

Except there wasn’t more to listen to, the wait leading to nothing.

“You don’t have to make a big deal of it,” Sora said softly, hoping that wasn’t the worst thing to say. “I know you’re sorry.”

Xehanort dipped the nail polish brush into the bottle and began on his other hand. He laid the red out at the base of his thumb and stroked it towards the end of his nail. Polish gathered at the sides when he went too slowly.

He put the brush back in the bottle and screwed it shut before setting it aside, his others fingers still unpainted. He stared at his thumb as the polish dried where it had flooded his cuticles. Sora stared with him, resting a hand on Xehanort’s shoulder.

Rain pelted the windows and wind whistled through the cracks.

Xehanort’s shoulders rose and fell with a hitched breath. A wet sniffle followed, a long exhale next. Xehanort raised the back of his hand to his face, the movement controlled and composed. 

Of course Xehanort would cry all polite-like. Sora squeezed again at his shoulders in wordless sympathy. He had cried many times for what he couldn’t do, but never over what he’d done.

Humankind wasn’t a monolith, but if Sora pretended it was, pretended he could speak for everyone in order for Xehanort to feel better, he wasn’t above it.

“It’s really okay,” Sora said. “I get that what you were doing made sense in your head. I know you’re sorry over stuff you’ve done.”

“To you,” Xehanort repeated, shrugging off Sora’s touch as he turned in the chair to look at him.

Xehanort’s eyes were glassy, the tear tracks on his cheeks fresh. More joined them as he gazed up into Sora’s face, the light in his eyes imploring. Something in Sora recoiled from a request he couldn’t decipher.

Sora didn’t have a lot of words that he hadn’t already said. He didn’t want to talk a whole lot anyway. What he wanted was to sit himself in Xehanort’s open lap, to wriggle all over him with a puppyish and therapeutic affection.

But he wasn’t asking for that.

“Do you understand what I am saying?” Xehanort asked.

“Yes?” Sora ventured. “I get that you’re sorry, seriously. And maybe I shouldn’t speak for everyone else, but—”

“I am not asking you to,” Xehanort cut in.

The tears continued. Sora reached out to thumb them away, clumsy as he brushed over Xehanort’s lashes. For his lengthy eloquence, it was that Xehanort spoke so plainly to Sora that made him difficult to understand.

“You’re sorry to me?” Sora asked, trying to string the words into sense.

“Deeply.”

Sora smiled weakly. Okay, he got that.

“But you’re—”

Sora stopped himself as he reconstructed Xehanort’s words. He wasn’t asking for Sora to speak on behalf of anyone else he was apologizing to. Sora tried to remember what that apology had been.

There wasn’t one.

“You’re sorry about everything else though, right?” Sora said.

He pitched his voice in a way that said the answer to this question was a resounding yes. Yes, yes. Absolutely. A given, how could he have thought otherwise? What a silly thing to ask to begin with.

“No.”

Sora’s blood forgot how to flow as he watched Xehanort, cowed and demure, crying prettily as he explained himself.

“You have a severe amount of trust in me, and in our time together I have done nothing to disabuse you of that. But to lie by omission would be no better,” Xehanort said. His voice trembled and Sora did too. “It was my hope you would arrive at this conclusion on your own. But I knew when you did you would—”

He gestured at the door, the end of his prediction beyond words. The furrow from earlier creased his brows as he shut his eyes tightly. It was the nearest Sora had seen Xehanort come to disassembling and it horrified him.

Sora took in half the words and a quarter of their meaning, his heart aching painfully as he was mired in what he heard and what he saw. The damage control in him kicked in faster than his comprehension as he wracked his brain for words of comfort.

“Hey,” Sora said. “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

The words were distant and calm on his tongue, his lips prickling with a numbness that spread to the rest of him. A tinny noise rang in his ears as his pulse fluttered, weak with shock. His blood was back to flowing but it wasn’t making it anywhere near his head.

He needed to make a conscious decision to sit before his body made the unconscious one to do so, and it wouldn't take into account the important things. Such as bones and how not to bust his head on questionably clean motel carpet.

Sora shuffled his way to the bed, seating himself on its edge as the ringing turned to a woozy roar. Its high tide lapped over his most shallow thoughts, dragging them out to a static sea as he was left with the deepest of them.

Xehanort was sorry. And Xehanort was not sorry.

But was he sorry about that? Was it like Sora’s guilt, manifesting artificially? Store bought, ready made, just add water.

Or tears.

If a Nobody could grow a heart, then an empty emotion could be made real.

The settling numbness made it hard to notice when Xehanort sat with him, the mattress creaking as it dipped. The hand that rested on his forearm belonged to someone else, the touch abstract as it sought to break through Sora’s thoughts.

He weighed the pros and cons that made up Xehanort.

Con, he didn’t feel bad about everything he’d done.

Pro, he felt bad about something.

Ultra pro, Xehanort had yet to commit the majority of his sins. Or was that a con?

Lastly, Xehanort was honest.

This trait did not allow itself to be sorted into a pro or con. It straddled the space between them, escaping the black and white and joining the complicated gray of Sora’s life as of late.

Good for others. Bad for his heart.

“I know how backwards this sounds, but sometimes I think you should be a little less honest,” Sora said.

Sora’s forearm began to feel a little like it was his as Xehanort rubbed it, his touch going deeper than the numbness. He put his hand over Xehanort’s without knowing what he wanted to do with it and looked into his eyes.

“You’re sorry about what you’ve done, right?” Sora asked again. There was only one answer he would accept and he didn’t know what he was going to do if he didn’t get it.

Xehanort squeezed his arm to the approaching of pain before his grip ebbed.

“To an incredible degree.”

Xehanort lied with such ease and grace that Sora’s heart warmed with hope for a moment until the chill of his previous instructions took hold. But Sora still summoned a paltry smile as he scraped together enough feeling in his body to shift closer.

Lying was bad, but Xehanort wasn’t bad. No more than Sora was for telling him to do so. It was all part of being imperfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this household we humanize our villains without necessarily redeeming them.
> 
> I would tap the 'fluff with dark undertones' tag but these are hardly undertones. In the next chapter, I promise you fluff.
> 
> (This feels like a good time to mention I finished writing the entirety of this fic several weeks back, and as such can assure you it has quite a few more chapters and happy ending.)


	27. Chapter 27

The bluster of the storm was best enjoyed from indoors.

Sora stood at the window, hands on the sill and nose near the glass as he watched the rain fall in a line that wasn’t wholly vertical. The trees shivered in the wind and the bright leaves they shed were left to drown in shallow pools.

Sora shivered as well when he sensed Xehanort behind him, but it was as warm as the wind outside.

“How is it out there?” Xehanort asked.

He smelled like nail polish. Neatly redone nail polish.

“Wet,” Sora said. “But better than before.”

Better because the black of the sky had eased, the memories of a past storm replaced by another. With the outdoors green and rich and flowered with the flush of summer, Sora thought back to their meeting under the sunny skies of the Symphony of Sorcery.

“You’ve changed a lot,” Sora said, eyes still on the storm.

“I have,” Xehanort agreed.

He rested his chin on the top of Sora’s head, arms draping loosely over his shoulders. The red of his nails was glossy and he splayed his fingers to keep them from touching as they finished drying.

“What did you think of me then?” Xehanort asked.

The question was on the side of a mumble, like he wasn’t sure he wanted it to be heard. Sora nearly tipped his head to think before remembering the weight on it. His memories of the time were misted with stress and confusion, but they weren’t foggy. He had a pretty good recollection of the first words that came to his mind when he met Xehanort.

He’d been too polite to say them then, and he wasn’t any less polite now.

“At first I didn’t know what to make of you,” Sora said. “Here I am, trying to do my test, and some black-coat shows up to taunt me. Which wasn’t a totally new experience, but I was sorta over it by then.”

“I did introduce myself at a decidedly inopportune time.”

“As if that wasn’t on purpose,” Sora huffed.

Sora nodded to himself as he thought and Xehanort’s chin moved with him. What a mess that had been. Xehanort spouting off like some high-falutin philosopher, the more he talked the less sense he made. His penchant for parading out his work force for play by play commentary on the spectator’s sport of Sora’s life hadn’t improved things.

Sora’s commitment to politeness wore thin as he recalled the run-ins.

“I thought you were a total bozo,” Sora announced.

“A bozo?” Xehanort asked.

He sounded genuinely scandalized by the idea.

“Well and truly,” Sora said. Xehanort deserved a piece of humble pie in exchange for all the word soup he’d fed Sora then. “You kept popping up to complicate things! Poking fun at me, saying my heart was a prison and all that.”

His heart housed others, sure, but it wasn’t a prison. That was an awful place to be. Sora’s heart was open and welcoming and he viewed any stays there closer to a bed and breakfast than a load of iron bars.

“And what precisely was ‘all that’?”

The distress in Xehanort’s voice had morphed into something worryingly similar to self-congratulatory. The tips of Sora’s ears burned as he thought of what Xehanort had told him during those times. His way of going about it was irritating and complicated, but none of it had been untrue.

Sora had been asleep and things were going wrong. For him, mostly. Xehanort’s honesty had been a problem for longer than Sora realized. He was proud to tell the truth and Sora had refused to believe it. He’d balked at being called a hypocrite then, but maybe it hadn’t been because it was wrong.

Yet Xehanort wasn’t entirely right.

“You got to acting like you were too miraculous to be part of the dream— as if I couldn't dream up a dream boat!”

Xehanort’s laughter was a sharp and surprised bark.

“That’s your largest qualm?”

“For now,” Sora said. “I bet I could think up a dozen more.”

“Then that’s enough thinking for today,” Xehanort said, kissing the top of Sora’s head.

“Enough thinking for a lifetime.”

They stood in comfortable silence as Sora continued to watch the world outside. The branches waved and the leaves still fell. There were daring peeps of birdsong above the wind and doubly daring squirrels that scavenged for snacks.

Blossoms drifted, were doused, and hit the ground. One of them made it as far as the window before it was slapped against it by a fresh gust. It stuck fast with its stamen spread.

It sent Sora back to thinking, recalling. Reminded him of a question he’d had long ago but never asked.

“Remember when we were in that meadow and there were all those petals?”

“I do.”

“And remember when you just, like… you grabbed one? Right out of the air?”

“Did I?” Xehanort asked.

He sounded like he remembered but wished he didn’t.

“You definitely did.”

“I fear it escapes me.”

“Wow, that’s way convenient considering you remember five seconds before,” Sora said, squirming his way until he was facing Xehanort.

At their nearness, the closest thing to eyes Sora could stare down was Xehanort’s chin.

“Look, I’m not judging here. But for someone who was so proud of being a normal person and not part of a dream, that was kind of a weirdo dream thing to do.”

Xehanort’s jaw flexed as he swallowed, his gaze fixed on what lay beyond the window. Sora brought his hands up to rest them on Xehanort’s face and drew him down. His cheeks were hot to the touch.

His eyes went anywhere Sora’s didn’t.

“Are you embarrassed?” Sora asked, lips curving in a smile.

_Here lies the high and mighty Xehanort, felled by his own hand. A hand that grabbed petals out of the air, for some reason._

“C’mon, fess up. What was that about?”

“I thought it might impress you,” Xehanort said.

His eyebrows knitted together as if in retrospect he was as confused by the act as Sora.

“You left an impression alright,” Sora said, smushing Xehanort’s cheeks together and kissing him fully. “You might have better luck next time if you give me the flower, though.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The flower-grabbing scene is straight out of an otome game. Dream Drop Distance itself is an otome game.
> 
> Tune in next week for a return to hypnosis, perhaps.


	28. Chapter 28

“Cessation,” Sora said, testing the word on his tongue after it was spoken by the television.

The commercial that played on the screen promised to bring it about by way of a hypnotism course. Cessation of smoking, of stress, of frivolous spending— once you got over the low, low price of forty dollars.

“It is an extravagant word for ‘stopping’ and nothing more.” Xehanort said.

His words were a sleepy mumble from where he peered over the covers. He’d melted into bed for a respectable post-cry nap and hadn’t reformed after waking up.

“Why not just say that?” Sora asked.

“To lend it scientific credence, I suppose.”

“Huh, okay.”

Sora frowned at the screen as the commercial passed. Fake as he wanted it to be, it told him there were five hundred happy customers and growing. Xehanort had one customer. Sora wasn’t ready to weigh in on if he was happy or not.

One conflicted customer.

_Not a great sales pitch. Don’t quit your day job, Xehanort._

Sora thought about that.

_But do, actually._

The hypnosis thing was weird, but Sora was the one who turned Xehanort down that path. Was it the best hobby for someone with villain vibes and a penchant for the dastardly? No.

_But._

Sora blanked out as he waited for the rest of the thought. The thing that would win him over, force him to see things in a new and improved light. It did not manifest. Well, alright. He didn’t need a reason to be supportive other than that it was a cool and friendly thing to do.

“So,” Sora started, and hummed to cover his hesitation. “You got into that hypnosis stuff a lot more than I thought you would.”

The sitcom-induced malaise in Xehanort’s eyes cleared.

“I did find it to be a rather odd suggestion at first,” he said. “But having been overly engaged with matters of the heart, I saw no harm in learning of the mind’s workings as well.”

Sora rubbed the back of his neck in lieu of response. He could see how it could be harmful, but he wasn’t going to give Xehanort any hot ideas. The covers crept down Xehanort’s chest as he emerged from under them, the blankets crumpling as he sat himself up against the headboard.

“I have been wondering if my interest was perhaps too keen for your tastes,” Xehanort admitted.

A shadow of his previous shame flitted over his face.

“I thought at first you were feigning naivety with your questions, acting the innocent to allow me to demonstrate my knowledge.”

Sora shrugged. He hadn’t been acting then, not outside of acting like a fool. Xehanort’s interpretation was of a charitable nature Sora was happy to leave uncorrected.

Xehanort reached for the nightstand where the pocket watch rested, the chain coiled around it like a serpent. He lifted it by the tail and dangled it in front of his own face, residual momentum swinging it in short arcs.

“I shouldn’t have pushed you like that,” Xehanort said.

The cuff of Sora’s sock was fraying. Sora spoke to it.

“Yeah, you shouldn’t have.”

There wasn’t much to the memory of what happened, but to know the unease wasn’t confined solely to his mind was a relief to Sora. His friends were his power, and his weakness was wanting to keep them all. Wanting to please them all.

Xehanort’s skin was sallow as the light of the television flashed on it, his eyes unfocused and the watch in his lap now. Sora leaned across the bed, stretching an arm out to take it. 

“That doesn’t mean we can’t do it again,” Sora said.

Xehanort’s face lit up brighter than the screen.

“Eventually!” Sora added, sitting back.

He looked down at the watch in his palm. The glass front could have been clearer and the numbers weren’t spaced right. The second hand ticked forwards and backwards. The fine subtleties in life were not something Sora had mastered.

“You’re the time guy, you can afford to slow down,” Sora said, handing the watch back. “Not that I don’t want to hear all about it. How ‘bout you try and sell me on it?”

Xehanort turned the television off and turned his full attention on Sora. He looked especially handsome as he hesitated, lashes fluttering as his lips curved with the enthusiasm that foreshadowed his grandest monologues.

“It is astonishingly simple at its core,” Xehanort started.

That was a lie.

There was no time to level the allegation, Xehanort off and explaining the simplicity in infinitesimal detail. He spoke of names that could have been people or places or points in time. He rattled off years that had passed, and more that hadn’t.

He brushed over behavior of the unconscious mind and delved into dissociation. Sora swam through the speeches on suggestion and susceptibility and clung to the driftwood that was the ideo-dynamic reflex.

There was no understanding for Sora. He fell back on following the lilting of Xehanort’s voice and his thoughtful pauses that preceded a continued chirping affection for the topic. His enthusiasm moved into his hands as he gestured, his teeth flashing as he chattered. There was a tooth or two that wasn’t entirely straight, and his canines were somewhere between a _pointed_ and _pointy_ that was disastrously cute.

All of Xehanort was disastrously cute, really.

Other bad guys plotted away in secret, the element of surprise up one sleeve and their conniving reserved for its execution. Xehanort operated in the abnormal. He handed in homework before the due date and wanted an award for it.

No calculators, show your work, explain how you arrived at this answer. He’d do it all and add an appendix for review, insisting on reading the entire thing aloud to the class.

Xehanort was the smartest idiot Sora knew.

Sora tucked himself closely to Xehanort as he went on, making the most appropriate of ooh’s and aah’s to encourage him while nothing stuck. Paltry now was the commercial from earlier, its promises nothing in the face of Xehanort’s passion.

“It’s romantic, don’t you think?” Xehanort asked.

Sora nodded mutely.

Surprise your sweetie with roses and chocolates no more. Economic, ergonomic. Have the time of your life, all with this one easy _tick-tick-tick_.

“—and have you ever heard such a delightful term?” Xehanort asked.

Sora’s sales pitch halted as he tuned back in.

“Sorry, what?”

“Animal magnetism,” Xehanort repeated, the words a satisfied purr.

“They’re doing what to animals now?” Sora asked.

“Oh no, it’s nothing like that,” Xehanort said.

His hands had found their way to Sora’s at some point during his sermon. Their grip was reassuring, and for once Sora was certain the sweat on his hands was not due to his own palms. He barely noticed anyway as he studied Xehanort’s face.

He looked happy.

Plain, everyday, normal person happy.

There was none of the destructive delight that often accompanied it or the poorly-tempered pride that was less about what he’d done and more about what he was on the path to undo. One world at a time, try to keep up.

This joy was different. It was a breathless excitement that radiated from him, a glittering in his eyes. This was about one world— his own, and he wanted to share it with someone. Sora threaded his fingers through Xehanort’s and readily made himself that someone.

“You likely know it as mesmerism,” Xehanort said.

“That’s hypnosis,” Sora supplied, feeling very smart.

“A common misconception.”

Sora felt less smart.

“There’s much more to it. Or rather, nothing to it,” Xehanort said. “No watches nor pendulums, no need for spoken word. It can be as simple as laying your hands on another’s.”

Sora looked down where their hands were joined. Two seconds later he was pulling them away with such speed that joints popped. He didn’t know whose.

“That was low!” Sora said, his happy jumbling with hurt.

Xehanort stared at him with blank surprise, one hand massaging the other. There were more joint noises and Sora would be happy to never hear them again.

“Flattered as I am by your faith in my abilities, I was not subjecting you to the subject material.”

“Then why were you doing that?” Sora asked, chest puffed. 

Xehanort’s head took on an owlish tilt as he regarded Sora.

“Are you asking why I’d be inspired to hold your hands?”

Sora’s chest deflated. It had been more suspicious in his head. Now Xehanort’s hands looked lonely where they rested in his lap. All sad and empty, begging for company. Abandoning them would be a cruelty to Xehanort and Sora alike.

Sora returned his hands to them.

Xehanort rubbed his thumbs over Sora’s knuckles and gave a gracious smile.

“Calling it simple is to do it a disservice,” Xehanort began. “This is an ungainly metaphor, but imagine hypnotism and its accoutrements to be a bike and its training wheels.”

“Uh huh.”

“When the training wheels are removed, the bicycle itself is simplified. But the act of riding it is not.”

“I never learned how to ride a bike,” Sora said.

“You’ve never learned how to ride a bike?”

Sora never knew Xehanort’s voice could crack like that. Or his neck as the tilt went owl-inspired again.

“What was I going to ride it on? Sand? I can ride a unicycle, though.”

Xehanort shut his eyes and mumbled to himself. He might have been counting Mississippis.

“And this has never presented itself to you as strange?” Xehanort asked, opening his eyes to level Sora with a baleful look.

Sora categorized the question as rhetorical.

“I will admit that’s a more apt metaphor,” Xehanort said. “One could consider hypnosis as training wheels, where to ride a unicycle proves a higher degree of difficulty through its simplicity.”

“So what I’m hearing is that I’m gonna be a natural at this whole mesmerism thing,” Sora decided.

However mesmerism worked was a mystery, but hands were involved and they both had a pair of those that were currently entangled. Sora moved his to rest over Xehanort’s, squeezing them as he met Xehanort’s gaze.

_No words._

No out loud ones, at least. That was fine. There was only one on his mind right now, and he squeezed Xehanort’s hands more tightly as it was beamed directly from Sora’s brain to Xehanort’s.

_Kiss._

Sora’s jaw set as he got to staring. He reminded himself to breathe while he did it. Xehanort went quiet under his gaze. This was working. This was way working, and any second Xehanort would—

“You’re allowed to blink,” Xehanort murmured.

Right. Blinking was up there with breathing. Important. Sora did them both.

It had to be time magic that let Xehanort kiss him in the time it took to do so.

Sure, there was no sludgy sensation, no sickening drag, but in what world was Xehanort that fast?

This one, apparently. But that was alright, because his lips were soft and gentle and his kiss was full of adoration. He was smiling against Sora before he pulled back.

“Wow! It worked,” Sora blurted.

“Not to dampen your accomplishment, but I’m afraid it was hardly difficult to know what you wanted.”

“Aww…”

“And it’s rather impossible to implant a desire I myself presently have,” Xehanort added.

He had a demure cant to his head, lovely and lowered.

Sora’s cheeks warmed as the desire to kiss became the action of kissing once more, things like breathing and blinking forgotten as he puppy dog scrambled his way on top of Xehanort and their lips met again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may want to tell me that learning to ride a unicycle is easier than learning how to ride a bicycle. But I cannot hear your. I am already biking away.


	29. Chapter 29

Meltdowns.

Everyone got one. A free one to be precise. Complimentary, on the house. A second you’d pay dearly for, and no one meltdown looked the same. Sora’s was mild when he got to thinking about it. A textbook tantrum with tears and scurrying off. Embarrassing, but he could have done worse.

He could have done a Riku.

He’d used it early, but boy, had Riku used it wisely. Or unwisely. Whichever it was he was lucky not to be locked up in space jail or whatever existed for the level of his actions.

Xehanort had used his free meltdown now, one tidy and neat and peppered with silent tears and grave regrets. It wasn’t a nuclear meltdown, but something tamer. A snowman under an early spring sun. Not that it was any less scary.

Riku may have ended _a_ world, but seeing Xehanort cry felt like the end of one.

He looked fine now, sitting at the desk and scrolling his phone. Occasionally he jotted a line down on the motel-branded scratch pad. At other times the glaze over his eyes lifted long enough for him to roll them.

“What ‘cha doing?” Sora asked.

“Emails. Expenses.”

“Eww, work,” Sora said, wrinkling his nose.

Xehanort’s snort made it to his throat. Sora wished he would stop the whole everything. No more emails, no more expenses. They were on vacation. A working vacation where Sora was trying to keep Xehanort from… well, working.

Xehanort tapped the end of his pen against the scratch pad and his foot tapped the carpeted floor.

“How cruel-hearted would it be for me to deny Xigbar expensing a pair of glasses?” he asked over his tapping.

Sora flipped through his mental roster of the Organization.

“He wants you to pony up for a monocle?”

“Bifocals,” Xehanort clarified.

“Um. Go halfsies?”

Xehanort nodded.

Sora decided he was better off not asking what that was about. If Xehanort understood, he probably wouldn’t have asked for any input. But Sora had other questions that were harder to ignore.

Like how Xehanort got his crony crowd to begin with.

The lot of them were in cahoots, though barely cordial at best. Sora would have quit on the spot if his job amounted to being a huge loser, but they kept coming back. How did Xehanort manage it?

Maybe it was the uniforms.

Or maybe Xehanort had a knack for being a smooth talker prior to all this hypnosis stuff. He did have a way of elaborating with such calm, if not convoluted reason, that he was hard to argue with.

“Hey, Xehanort?”

“Yes?”

“Back when you did that hypnosis thing, what exactly did you do?” Sora asked. The question had been skirting his mind as he watched Xehanort work.

Xehanort set his phone on the scratch pad, the pen next. He took a breath that somehow sounded serious.

“Sora, you fell asleep.”

Sora stared at the back of Xehanort’s head. 

“What is it you think I may have done?” Xehanort asked.

His voice was light and hard to read. Was he made nervous, or irritated by the question? The hair on Sora’s arms stood on end as he picked over his smorgasbord of suspicions he’d been putting together.

It was sort of ridiculous. He wasn’t worried about being turned into a mindless drone or coughing up classified secrets. He wouldn’t be having any of these thoughts if the former had happened, and the latter would require him to have secrets to share.

Or secrets important to Xehanort. That Sora had once stolen a candy bar before he knew what stealing was did not seem particularly valuable.

What Sora worried was that he now trusted too much and that it had not come on its own.

But there had been trust predating that. The trust that Xehanort was safe to be around, alone. The trust that he was not a monster. The trust that he was a person above all else, capable of friendship and love. Deserving of it, too.

Sora could no more construct an impulsive kiss on Xehanort’s behalf any more than Xehanort could construct trust within Sora. These baselines existed already without outside help and Xehanort had earned that trust with an unrelenting honesty.

Right up until Sora had the wise idea of telling him to knock it off.

“I don’t know,” Sora lied. He crossed his arms over his chest and hugged a shiver against his body. “I seriously knocked out?”

“Well and truly.”

Xehanort said it as pretty as he did when he spoke the truth, as pretty as he did when he lied.

Sora could not tell the difference between these things and trusted Xehanort all the same. At worst, he was only doing what Sora told him to.

* * *

Sora let Xehanort continue to work.

A little couldn’t hurt, he told himself. It helped that Xehanort grumbled his way through it. Any suspicions of devious scheming went out the window as he griped about the price of boot polish and how glasses were bad enough, but now binoculars?

And since when was wine a work-related expense?

Sora bit his tongue. It struck him as a necessary one in their line of work.

When tax code came out of Xehanort’s mouth, Sora wanted him to stop working all over again. This time out of sympathy.

The regret on his face as he retired to the couch where Sora sat was a punishment of its own, no scolding needed. But it didn’t exempt him from teasing.

“Isn’t vacation nice?” Sora asked.

“I’ve been reminded,” Xehanort said, collapsing onto his side.

His head landed in Sora’s lap with blatant calculation. Sora patted it, appreciating Xehanort’s unicorn hair for the umpteenth time. Sora’s faded carnival admission band looked to be going the way of his shell necklace as his hand moved. Beside it, his new bracelet clicked together.

He wished he had something half as meaningful to give Xehanort to remember their time here together. Xehanort had showered him in gifts, from his shawl to his questionably-won ring and a carefully crafted bracelet.

Sora had gotten Xehanort lipstick and nail polish. Not on account of being particularly thoughtful, only as a means of covering for his screw up. But Sora was smart in his own ways and there was time yet to find something. He’d figure it out.

He toyed with Xehanort’s bangs in the meantime, winding them around his finger and letting them slip loose. They reminded him of the antennae of shadows. Bumbling little beings with no names to their blank faces. 

“If I was a heartless, would you know it was me?” Sora asked.

The air hung heavy as Sora waited for an answer. He’d think Xehanort hadn’t heard him except he’d breathed funny for a moment.

“I’d like to think so, but I couldn’t guarantee it,” Xehanort said.

“What!”

Xehanort rolled onto his back, grimacing as Sora flicked his nose. The harbinger of heartless was not supposed to admit that.

“You’d have to show me your heart first,” Xehanort said, though he walked the words forward like he was afraid Sora wouldn’t believe them.

When Sora frowned, Xehanort raised a hand to guard himself from a second flick.

“You can do that?”

“I can,” Xehanort said, rolling again until he buried his face against Sora’s stomach.

A no-flick zone. Clever.

Sora wondered what it would be like to show Xehanort his heart. Was this along the lines of the poetic, or a physical thing? Would it be a quick peek, or a drawn out production? Sora had more questions, but one was more important than the rest.

“Do you have to take it out?” Sora asked.

“Yes,” was the muffled reply against his stomach.

“Like, _out_ -out?”

“Yes.”

The confirmation gave Sora a sitting vertigo. He tried not to think of the logistics. Tried not to think of Xehanort’s hands as they held his heart, seeing who he was inside and out. Pink and crystalline, there for the taking.

Was it weird that that was hot?

No.

It wasn’t weird because that wasn’t hot. What was hot was Xehanort’s breath puffing through his shirt. Sora’s pulse quickened until he dragged the least hot thing to the front of his mind.

“So you’re in charge of the expense account?” Sora asked.

“I am.”

Death and taxes came for everyone. Xehanort had managed to evade the first, but apparently the second was too large a hurdle.

“What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever expensed?”

“Bottled water from a hotel minibar,” Xehanort said.

Sora waited for the punchline.

“I could have had tap water.”

Xehanort was the joke.

Heat surged inside Sora, now born of secondhand embarrassment. Forget Xehanort being the smartest idiot he knew, Xehanort was the goodest villain. That he didn’t use company money to splurge on fun things was not a standard Sora could hold himself to were their positions switched.

“How many times do I have to tell you to start thinking outside the box? You know all the rules, why not break a few,” Sora asked. “Live a little!”

“Heed your own advice and I will devote a heavier consideration to it,” Xehanort said.

“Please, I was born outside of the box. I have never even seen a box. Maybe you can tell me what they look like.”

Sora wanted Xehanort to smile, but he didn’t. He got the mark between his brows that said he was getting picky with his words in an attempt to be a damp blanket instead of a wet one.

“You have lived at such length within your box you cannot perceive a life outside of it.”

The heat in Sora cooled into a simple sadness. Xehanort was a wet, down-stuffed duvet.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Xehanort sighed and righted himself, shoulders rolling as he rested back against the couch. He spent a moment looking for more words before he placed a hand on Sora’s knee. The gesture was delicate, like he was about to break terrible news with no good to soften it.

“When you were first drawn into this you were quite small, and you must have wanted terribly to be the hero.”

“I am a hero,” Sora cut in.

Xehanort patted Sora’s knee with an empathy that made his stomach churn.

“When you were first drawn into this,” Xehanort started again, but he paused to take an extra breath and changed his course, “what was your goal? What would have made you a hero?”

Sora hesitated. The answer to that had changed many times since that first stormy night. He wanted his friends back, his home back. His life back. But he could have none of these things while darkness flourished.

To defeat it would require a hero.

“To stop the darkness,” he settled on.

“And have you?”

Sora looked down at Xehanort’s hand. A hand he’d fought in many fashions, but never truly defeated. Along the way he’d accomplished much, been courageous and kind, helped those in need— all heroic actions. These were the steps on the path to becoming a hero.

A guideline for an end goal he hadn’t reached.

Like how being a keyblade wielder was the path to a keyblade master. But then he’d bungled that, too. And he kept at it because that was his box. He wasn’t a hero and he wasn’t a keyblade master.

He was Sora, who wasn’t special, but had figured if he tried hard enough he could be.

Sora shook his head free of the thought. That wasn’t true.

Beside Sora was someone who saw him as special, had taken an interest in him for the fact he existed. The original underlying reasons weren’t fantastic, but Sora didn’t care. To examine them was to diminish them and the fluttery feeling of being wanted that they brought.

Xehanort’s hand left Sora’s knee, moving to skim against his cheek. There was a wetness Sora hadn’t noticed, and he gave a sniff as he lifted his head. He’d used his meltdown card already and wasn’t about to shell out for a second one.

“If you think this is going to stop me, you’re wasting your breath,” Sora said, pulling himself together enough to stick his tongue out at Xehanort.

“I have no such intention,” Xehanort assured him, withdrawing his touch and resting his hands in his lap.

He looked like he didn’t know what to do for Sora. Sora didn’t know what he wanted Xehanort to do either. Behind the sting of them, Xehanort’s words were a kindness, an offhanded help.

Because Xehanort could be kind, and he could help. It just didn’t look like what Sora expected. It came in small acts, the fastening of a necklace or guidance through a crowd. It was how he salvaged Sora’s shells and had the daring to point out that, really, Sora wasn’t making much in the way of progress. Stuck in the rinse and repeat of smacking stuff until the world wasn’t as bad for a little bit. Then back to smacking.

If Sora didn’t know better, he’d consider that pretty heroic.

Xehanort cleared his throat and glanced to the far wall, his foot back to tapping the carpet.

“All I ask is that you think outside your box as well,” he said. “Is that too much?”

“Nah, I think I can manage,” Sora said, gears he’d stopped turning previously coming to life. “As long as you don’t mind another carnival date.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who is Xehanort paying taxes to, you may ask.
> 
> Himself, probably. Somehow.
> 
> My roommate said you can't expense glasses, but the internet told me you can. Why would the internet lie to me?


	30. Chapter 30

Sora’s hand rested on his necklaces.

His newest one clinked against the silver crown, his biofield exceeding all known forms of measurement as his pulse hammered in his ears. That Sora made it onto the carnival grounds by flashing his ratty orange band at the admission booth probably had a lot to do with that.

It was going totally swimmingly until the admission booth’s clerk gave him a long, hard look that lasted several heartbeats too long. But then a resigned sigh and a waved hand signalled Sora on, the indiscretion not worth pursuing at this pay grade.

Back at the booth, Xehanort was paying for a new band. What a pleb. Although he looked distinctly non-pleb in his suede booties and Country-Club-worthy bottoms that he’d defined as ‘transitional spring-summer dress pants.’

It made him look more ready for fine dining than fried fritters.

“How is your necklace treating you?” Xehanort asked when he joined Sora.

“Good, I think,” Sora squeaked.

He still hadn’t entirely grasped that it was his now, gained after an in and out detour at the crystal shop per Xehanort’s request. Xehanort had it out of the case and onto the counter before Sora could make it past the lickable-looking salt lamp.

And then it was around Sora’s neck, hanging like a medal while Xehanort tucked the receipt away and ushered Sora out the door.

“Are you sure you can pass this off as a business expense?” Sora asked.

He vaguely recalled that the necklace was supposed to ground his spirit or something. He felt like he was floating instead.

“As a medical necessity, yes,” Xehanort said. “My plans would suffer were I to allow you to roam about with unharmonized blood.”

Xehanort’s plans were wide-reaching and overarching and a painfully expensive amulet was exactly the kind of thing that would be part of them. But Xehanort had a tender turn to his lips that Sora had come to understand appeared when he was telling a joke.

Sora smiled back as he reached out to take Xehanort’s hand. He wasn’t the only one with plans, and Sora’s neared fruition as they passed the tattoo booth and ever-revolving ferris wheel while retracing their original steps.

When the beacon of the high striker came into view, Xehanort’s feet decided they would not be part of this retracing.

“I did not come here to watch you be made a fool of again.”

“Come on,” Sora said, tugging Xehanort forward. “You don’t get to have a monopoly on making me look bad.”

Xehanort made a muleish noise to match his stubborn steps.

“I have the decency not to charge you for the privilege,” Xehanort pointed out.

Sora ignored Xehanort in favor of dragging him to the row of stuffed animals that hung over his least favorite carnival employee. From the look they shot him, Sora suspected he wasn’t their favorite either.

“You’re back,” they said as Sora came to a stop.

There was no offer of a free turn. Sora let go of Xehanort and dug into his pocket, pulling crumpled bills from it. The operator did not hold out their hand when he tried to pay. They folded their arms and Xehanort mirrored them.

Alright. Not the best start to this plan.

“I’m going to play,” Sora said, waving the money at the operator.

“Game’s broken.”

“A rich excuse, considering it’s fixed to begin with,” Xehanort said.

Wow, spicy. Not part of the plan either, but Sora liked the addition. He let Xehanort and the operator glower at one another as he looked at the game. The lights flashed in welcome and the bullseye was lit. The flimsy mallet propped nearby he paid no mind. He didn’t want it.

What he wanted was stronger.

Sora let the money fall to the ground, his hand swiping for the operator’s hat. It was as flimsy as the mallet, the brim crumpling as he snatched it. Sora winced in silent apology as he backed up.

“I can’t pull a rabbit out of a hat, but I can do you one better.”

Sora did a lot worse.

Summoning a keyblade was simple. A whisper of wanting and the follow up of having, in his grip in the time it took to blink. It looked like magic. It was magic.

That magic wasn’t inherently superior to practiced sleight of hand was not a consideration Sora had.

Hand? Check. Hat? Check.

Keyblade? Ultra check.

Wait.

The keyblade had skipped its place in the order of things. Hand came first, then hat. Then hand in hat. Keyblade brought up the rear. Streamlined, straightforward. A masterful demonstration as long as it went according to the plans in his head.

A plan where his keyblade didn’t appear in his hand at the first casual thought of it.

His body carried out the new order of things faster than his mind could reassess his actions, Sora’s now-full fist jamming downwards at the dark insides of the hat.

Years of muscle memory with a keyblade did not a kind stroke make.

Sora’s brain caught up to find the hat on the ground. It had taken on a new and artistic construction that made the ‘crushed’ in ‘crushed velvet’ doubly applicable. Bits of brim stuck out like broken bones, a murder victim for the three of them to stare at.

No, not the three of them. Xehanort was busy giving Sora a look that spoke of an impossible mortification tempered by a lizard-brained enjoyment.

Sora shot Xehanort his best ‘uh oh’ grin and switched to plan B.

It was plan A, but with the casualty of a hat.

Once he brought his keyblade down on the bullseye, he had to switch to plan C.

It was plan A, but with the casualty of a hat and the bullseye. And the entire striker machine. 

The bullseye shattered under the weight of Sora’s keyblade, the lights sparking and hissing as the damage traveled up the tower. The meter did not rise and the bell did not ring. If it wasn’t broken before, it sure was now.

The next step in his original plan required audience participation. In it Xehanort cheered, or smiled, or was otherwise overcome with emotion. Good emotion. The one on his face didn’t strictly fall into that category.

They could come back to that step later.

Sora was left at the final step of whatever lettered plan he was acting on now. It also required audience participation. Xehanort would pick his favorite plush and they’d stroll off together. Strolling away now that property damage had come onto the scene didn’t seem totally feasible now.

But the operator didn’t look too bothered. They were stuck staring at their hat, gaze steady and eyes unblinking. Sora fumbled as he dismissed his keyblade and waved for their attention.

“Uh, I can explain,” he said.

He couldn’t explain. Not in a way that wouldn’t upend the world order.

The operator ignored him, remaining focused on the hat. Sora felt bad about that, but this seemed severe. It wasn’t like it couldn’t be replaced. He took a step forward to offer as much when he felt the sticky-slow grip of time as he neared.

The operator was stuck staring at the hat because they were _stuck_.

Sora shied backwards, skirting around the tacky perimeter as he neared the hanging prizes. He’d discuss not magicking randos with Xehanort later. Just as soon as Sora was ready to discuss what he was about to do.

Which was adding theft on top of property damage.

Sora turned to the line of prizes and jumped, grabbing at the foot of the nearest one. It came down with little resistance, oversized and overstuffed. He hugged it against him, vision obscured until he tipped his head to one side to look around it.

Xehanort’s expression had softened into one akin to what Sora originally wanted. Happy, albeit subdued. There was a proud glittering to his eye as Sora bustled past, mumbling a hasty apology for ‘all that and then some’ before his prize was a battering ram in the crowd, clearing a path for his escape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life comes at you fast.


	31. Chapter 31

Thinking outside the box came naturally to Sora, acting on it didn’t.

That was his takeaway as he sat by the petting zoo, gazing into the big button eyes of his ill-gotten prize. It had an amiable smile on its face, free of judgement. It didn’t care that Sora had gone against his own rules. Rules that kept him from winning.

Now that he’d won, he felt like a loser.

Sora shook his head. It didn’t shake the feeling. This had to be part of thinking outside the box, the decisions new and difficult, the comfort of the old and familiar calling to him. But the old and familiar didn’t get him anywhere.

“You look rather pensive for someone with a lovely new toy,” came a voice from behind him.

Sora started to his feet, plush clutched close as he turned. Xehanort walked towards him, stride slow and untroubled.

“There you are! I was starting to think you got busted,” Sora said.

By who was a mystery. Donald was so intent on drilling into Sora’s head that world order needed to be maintained that he never said what would happen if it wasn’t. Whatever the result, it didn’t appear to be instantaneous.

“I can’t dream what I would be accused of,” Xehanort said.

“What you did back there, the time stuff—"

Sora cut himself short.

It wasn’t Xehanort’s fault.

Sora had started it. All Xehanort had done was damage control, salvaging what he could of the situation.

“Thanks,” Sora finished.

“You’re quite welcome,” Xehanort said.

He had a way of smiling that made things seem like not so big a deal. Sora did his best to return it as he belatedly pushed the plush at Xehanort. It fit in his arms better than it had Sora’s, his face not obstructed by the top of its fluffy head. The look he gave it was the big deal here, sweet and serene.

“For you,” Sora said.

“A wonderful gift,” Xehanort remarked.

Sora shrugged.

“No biggie.”

And it wasn’t.

Sora had left the black and white of playing by the rules and created his own in the gray between them. He’d come out the victor for it, nervous and squishy inside but mostly happy with the results. The hatricide was an accident and the bullseye smashup was practically a necessary evil.

And seeing Xehanort’s admiration as he looked over his gift made it worth it. He kept it in his arms while they walked, the singular downside the lack of hands he had available for holding. A small price to pay, Sora reasoned as the pig races came into sight.

It got Sora back to thinking outside the box as he spoke to Xehanort.

“D’you want to help me set some records?” Sora asked.

Xehanort followed Sora’s gaze.

“I would be honored.”

* * *

Sora was living his worst nightmare. The one where he was naked and in public.

Or at least he felt naked, staring at his wrist where his carnival bracelet had been up until the clowns that called themselves security made him hand it over. His glass-and-shell bracelet looked lonely with nothing beside it.

“Do you think there’s a rock for this?” Sora asked.

“For what?”

"For this!" Sora said, gesturing at his semi denuded wrist. "I'm so exposed..."

"And here I thought you were referencing embarrassment."

Sora’s lips thinned as he quieted. Dealing with embarrassment was on hold while he worked on accepting the results of the race that had happened not ten minutes ago.

First place human, last place everything else. A placement he contested.

They were pigs. Four legs to his two, but all short. The math didn’t add up. He needed a calculator.

“I think it’s really unfair that pigs can run that fast,” Sora said.

Xehanort hummed.

“You coulda done something, you know,” Sora added.

He’d seen Xehanort during the race, seated on a hay bale with his plush beside him. Xehanort had not cheered, which Sora decided was the foundation of his loss.

“I did plenty,” Xehanort countered. “Was I not the one who facilitated your entry, and at your own behest?”

That sure was a fancy way of saying he’d put the brakes on human interference. Xehanort should have run pig interference, too. Was it possible to rig pigs? Given the other sketchy games Sora was convinced of as much by the time he made it to the finish line.

Security had been his welcoming committee, and they hadn’t let Sora get the accusation out. They said something about _civil codes_ and _animal welfare_ and _barred from entrance_ as he was made to forfeit his bracelet.

Sora’s ego shrank to the point where he lost a few inches of height as they walked back to the motel.

“Those pigs were disconcertingly fast,” Xehanort eventually conceded, readjusting his hold on his plush. “But discretion is important in a crowded area such as that.”

“Discretion is not pointing out when someone has spinach in their teeth. You pretended not to know me!”

Sora could recall it vividly, the little o-shape of surprise Xehanort’s mouth formed, the way he withdrew as if offended when Sora tried to call him over. He was faker than these games, his fingers in a dozen pies until things got messy.

“I perceived no injury to you aside from pride, which I hardly consider a reason for me to intervene,” Xehanort said.

He held his plush aloft as he moved around the housekeeping cart a few doors away from theirs. Sora jammed a hand into his pocket and grabbed the keycard for the room. He shot Xehanort a sulking look and pushed the key into the slot.

The card reader blinked red.

Sora took the card out and turned it over, reslotting it.

The red blinked again.

“Let me try,” Xehanort said, shifting his plush to his hip.

His results did not differ.

“How long did you book our stay for?” Xehanort asked.

They glanced at the housekeeping cart as it rolled one room nearer. 

“Uh.”

“Sora.”

“I’m thinking!” Sora said, fingers flexing as he counted on them.

Sora recounted when he didn’t like the result. It didn’t change the outcome. He was about to use Xehanort’s hands when the plush was being pushed into his own, bundled against his chest as Xehanort slipped past. He took the keycard with.

Sora watched Xehanort go, his heels clicking along the walkway before he was disappearing into the shiny doors of the lobby. The cart came nearer. Sora tried to remember if he left his underwear out, then wondered how long he could fend off housekeeping.

He scuffed his foot at a fossilized piece of gum on the walkway as he went over his booking. It was long, but they made it so complicated. You booked days but days didn’t always include nights. It was still light out and that counted as _day_ for Sora. The card had to be defective.

He tensed as the cart stopped yards away from him, the plush in his arms clutched like a shield. There was a heavy moment where he considered knocking the thing over and blaming it on a freak gust of— what? Seaside breeze? Ghost? Because someone had to have died here at least once— when the lobby doors swung open and again the _click click click_ of Xehanort’s heels was returning and Sora had never been so relieved to see the smug ‘mission accomplished’ look on his face.

The reader blinked green and they hurried in, the do-not-disturb slapped onto the door’s knob with seconds to spare. Sora peeked through a gap in the curtains to watch the cart go by, no ghosts necessary.

“Checkout was this morning,” Xehanort informed Sora.

“What the heck kind of place makes you check out in the morning? I booked days,” Sora said as he turned from the window.

Xehanort gave him a look that said he couldn’t tell if Sora was joking or not. Sora let the mystery live on as he padded over to the couch, sitting Xehanort’s plush down. It took up an entire seat.

“What now?” Sora asked. “Are they gonna give us the boot?”

“No. I’ve booked us a couple more days,” Xehanort said. “A business expense, if you will.”

Sora brightened. Was this tax fraud? He hoped Xehanort was committing tax fraud. It seemed more fun than Sora had realized. And kind of sexy.

“Thanks for doing that,” Sora said as he sat on the edge of the bed. “I figured they would tell me when my time was up. Or send a bill.”

“That’s not how these things work at all,” Xehanort said, sounding somewhat scandalized. “And I must admit to being particularly in awe that you forgot the dates.”

Sora looked at the plush. It stared back, one eye higher than the other.

“It’s not like that.”

He hadn’t forgotten. Not in the way Xehanort was thinking. It was just that he hadn’t wanted to remember. This stay was finite, his time when Xehanort needing to come to an end. Sora didn’t like that. To allow that truth into his mind meant hovering around it, counting down the days as they became hours and then minutes.

Things would still end if he didn’t think about them, but their ending wouldn’t eat up the time he had left. The normalcy of the moment would be lived in full, fending off imaginings of a future of jetsetting to new worlds to take on old problems.

No bitter words exchanged, no blows coming to pass. 

No trying to be a hero.

Sora liked his work, but he didn’t like his job. The difference was nothing he had words for, simply the gut joy and dread that came from each respectively.

“I didn’t want to stop all this,” Sora admitted, gesturing at the room.

Xehanort joined his plush on the couch. They made a cute couple. 

“I don’t imagine you do,” he said.

Xehanort crossed his legs with delicate precision, his hands folding in his lap. Add a sweater vest and he’d be the picture of a therapist, politely waiting for a patient to go on. Sora plucked at the bedspread, then plucked words from the soup of his brain.

“It’s not fun— other stuff, I mean. Whatever that normal is, it sucks. It sucks and I’m tired of it. This normal is way better, getting smoked by pigs included.”

Xehanort didn’t speak. His eyes remained on Sora, half-lidded and interested like a cat taking in conversation with no guarantee of response.

“You said it yourself, I’m not getting anywhere,” Sora said. “What’s the point?”

“A lack of progress is not permission to fail,” Xehanort said.

“You’re kidding me. Aren’t you supposed to be all, yeah, give up, there is no point?” Sora asked, rubbing his face and adding, “But with bigger words.”

“While we’re quoting the past, might I point out your telling me that I would be wasting my breath should I try to stop you?”

Sora waved his hands at the air in non-response. He’d meant that then and he meant it now, but it’d be nice to hear he didn’t have to. To have the option of stopping, of laying down his weapons and picking up a normal life, was a comfort he yearned for. There was a soft rebellion in Sora’s heart that wanted choice in his railroaded existence.

Xehanort crossed his legs the other way.

“If it truly is permission you seek, that is not mine to give. You’ll have to fuck up your own life,” Xehanort said primly.

Sora squawked in shock. It was the most eloquent ‘fuck’ he’d ever heard.

“You can’t say that!”

“I can and I did,” Xehanort said. “The gravity of the situation necessitates it.”

Sora pressed his fingers to his temples and stared at the carpet. Fuck? Xehanort actually made that word with his mouth and voice on purpose. _This_ was the upsetting of world order. Sora was going to need time to cope with this new reality.

Radical acceptance hadn’t kicked in yet when the mattress dipped and Xehanort sat beside him.

“It’s frankly borderline offensive to my sensibilities that you think I’d resort to talking you down from your destiny,” Xehanort said, though his sensibilities sounded fine. “Uncouth and overdone. I have more respect for my craft.”

“Your sensibilities? What about my sensibilities? You just said fuck,” Sora pointed out.

“As have you.”

“It’s not the same!”

Sora fell back on the bed with a groan. Who was this guy? A body snatcher turned body snatched? ‘Damn’ Sora could buy. ‘Hell’, too. Those were classy bad words. ‘Bitch’ if Xehanort was ultra steamed, but he’d probably feel bad about it when he cooled off.

Xehanort lay down with him, bringing a hand to rest on Sora’s. A wordless _I’m here_ if he wanted to continue the conversation, the silence an out if he didn’t. For a baddie, Xehanort was awfully bad at his job.

“At the risk of over-divulging matters of the heart, what you expect of me is a prospect I’ve entertained at length. You, out of the way and set prettily to the side. Conceivably at my side—"

“Don’t say it all creepy like that,” Sora mumbled, but inside he was relieved at the return of Classic Xehanort and not whatever flavor he’d been served a minute ago.

Xehanort made a mildly offended noise.

“Then I will skip any ‘creepy’ and say that I deemed it an improbable, if not impossible, fit.”

“Wait, no. Go back,” Sora said. “Explain better.”

Xehanort speaking less was creepier than saying too much, weird words included.

Xehanort took a long breath before deigning to speak again.

“You are needed whether you wish to be involved or not. Your heart knows this intimately, and a heart heeds destiny more readily than the mind might resist it.”

His voice held the tired resignation of one who had long battled this truth and it made Sora sorry to hear. He put a hand over Xehanort’s and gave it an understanding squeeze.

“You can’t stop either, huh?” Sora asked, but he had the answer already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Insert soap directly into Xehanort's mouth.


End file.
